POPSUGAR Health

Behind the Effort to Get Formula Covered For Breast Cancer Survivors

Korin Miller — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:30:03 -0700

Johanna Tran was just 30 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She's since undergone chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, radiation, and a DIEP flap reconstruction, which rebuilt her breast using her own skin and fat. "I am unable to breastfeed because I had a double mastectomy," she tells Popsugar.

In 2012, breast pumps and related breastfeeding equipment became covered by health insurance as part of the Affordable Care Act. But while this coverage supports nursing moms, it leaves out women like Tran who can't breastfeed out of medical necessity, requiring them to take on the additional costs of formula or donor milk out of pocket.

"Women didn't choose this path," says Tran, a 38-year-old mother of two in Florida who was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in 2019. "I'm sure all of the mothers who are unable to breastfeed would love the opportunity to do so, but the choice has been taken away from them. It's not fair that on top of that, you face the hardship of having to pay for formula."

Katie LaMar was also unable to nurse after experiencing gynecological cancer twice. She welcomed a son with the help of a gestational carrier, and said her inability to breastfeed him was "deeply painful" for her. "I cried while holding my son in the hospital bed, apologizing for what I could not give him," she says.

Lawmakers are trying to help families like these with The Constance C. McDaniel Medically Necessary Infant Formula and Donor Milk Act, aka Connie's Bill. But the journey is just getting started. Here's what you need to know about the bill, and why it can make such a difference for some families.

The Financial Burden of Formula Feeding Is Real For These Families

LaMar estimates that she typically spent between $200 and $400 a month on formula to feed her son. "For a family already facing the costs of cancer, that recurring expense was difficult to absorb," she says.

Tran says it would "mean so much" to her for formula to be covered. "Breast cancer takes so much away from you, including your ability to feed your children naturally. There is no other option but formula," she says. "It feels like a double slap in the face that after surviving cancer, defying the odds and birthing healthy children, cancer strikes another blow by preventing you from feeding them."

Having formula covered by health insurance would be a big help for survivors, Tran continues. "Breast pumps are covered but you need breasts to use them… . This would even the playing field," she says.

How Will Connie's Bill Make a Difference?

Connie's Bill was named after Constance C. McDaniel, an advocate and mother who died from breast cancer in 2025, aims to cover medically necessary infant formula and donor milk for parents who can't breastfeed due to medical conditions. The bipartisan bill was created in partnership with Bobbie for Change and nonprofit organization The Breasties and introduced in the House of Representatives in May 2026.

The bill is "designed to close a glaring policy gap in the Affordable Care Act," says Michele Lampach, Bobbie for Change Director of Impact and Policy. "While current federal law mandates that insurance cover breast pumps for new parents - a huge win for breastfeeding and pumping families - it leaves behind cancer previvors, survivors, and others who medically cannot breastfeed due to breast or gynecologic surgeries or other medical diagnoses," she says.

Connie's Bill establishes a three-year federal pilot program to cover infant formula and donor milk for parents who can't breastfeed. "It is a long-overdue step toward true feeding equity, that all families receive the equivalent federal support towards feeding their babies," Lampach says.

McDaniel, who inspired the bill, "was a fierce advocate on a mission to ensure no other family had to fight the system the way she did," Lampach says. The bill has since been championed by legislative leaders like Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

"Too often, diseases like cancer take the deeply personal decision to breastfeed away from moms," Schultz says. "It's more important than ever that parents who need these nutritious products for their newborns out of medical necessity can access them. As a cancer survivor myself, I feel a deep obligation to raise awareness and solve this longstanding problem."

What Options Do Parents Have Now?

The Breasties originally reached out to infant formula maker Bobbie about this issue five years ago, Lampach says. "No one in government or the healthcare industry had an answer - let alone a solution," she says. "So, rather than wait for the system to fix itself, we became partners and launched the Bobbie Breasties Program to act as a temporary bridge, providing a full year of free formula to hundreds of mothers navigating cancer diagnoses."

Tran is one of them. "It has made a tremendous difference in our lives," she says. To date, the Bobbie Breasties Program has supported 615 families. "This was never meant to be a permanent substitute for systemic support," Lampach says. "Along the way, we've been actively pushing to change the law."

Extending the Affordable Care Act to cover infant formula for survivors would be a game-changer, Tran says. "There is enough stress with having a newborn, navigating family transitions, and dealing with postpartum issues," she says. "Figuring out how to feed your newborn or pay for formula shouldn't be one of them."

Korin Miller is a writer specializing in general wellness, health, and lifestyle trends. Her work has appeared in Women's Health, Self, Health, Forbes, and more.

What I Learned About Loneliness After Visiting a Blue Zone

Jordan Shalhoub (she/they) — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 11:35:02 -0700

Loneliness is so back. Between the rise of "loneliness influencers" and constant discourse about the male loneliness epidemic, loneliness has become something of a hot topic. But that doesn't make it any easier to live with.

In 2024, I moved out of my ex-partner's home and into a studio in Los Angeles. It was my first time living alone in four years and my first time being really, truly single as an adult. Almost three years later, I'm still living alone. Still really, truly single.

Unfortunately, loneliness isn't just fodder for internet discourse - it's legitimately bad for our health. A 2023 advisory from the US Surgeon General found loneliness and isolation to be "more widespread than many of the other major health issues of our day, including smoking, diabetes, and obesity, and with comparable levels of risk to health and premature death."

This point was driven home for me when I got the opportunity to visit the Nicoya Peninsula in the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica - home to one of the world's five blue zones. These are areas of the world where people live significantly longer and healthier lives. The question is: why?

My trip started (alone) at the beautiful Westin Reserva Conchal by Marriott. After exploring the property, I met with a larger group for a boat safari in the Palo Verde National Park. There, our tour guide educated us on the local wildlife, the Guanacaste region, and the specific blue zone to which we were headed. This area is known as the Nicoya Peninsula, and it's currently home to 600 people over the age of 100.

Life is hard, but we don't have to go it (completely) alone.

According to our guide, this longevity can be attributed to a myriad of lifestyle factors, including eating habits and environmental resources. But every blue zone has its own secret ingredient - Nicoya's is its sense of community.

The Nicoya Peninsula is led by the "plan de vida" culture. Literally translated to mean "life plan," plan de vida tells us that we all have a unique sense of purpose. In Nicoya, plan de vida also serves the community, with relationships based on trust and care for your family, friends, and neighbors. This community-centered culture doesn't just mean greater shared resources - it's also created a calmer, less stressful way of life. People work hard, but they always know they aren't doing it alone. It takes a village, after all.

So many of us have been told to lower our stress levels at some point in our life (which . . . easier said than done). As Micaela Bayard, MD, previously explained to Popsugar, long-lasting stressors can contribute to inflammation, increasing the risk of heart disease, diabetes, digestive problems, and other chronic health conditions. That said, some stress is unavoidable. The solution? Maybe the village has something to do with it.

The Surgeon General's report writes that "higher social connection provides increased opportunities for and access to support, thus reducing the likelihood of perceiving challenging situations as stressful." This has certainly proven to be the case in Nicoya. Life is hard, but we don't have to go it (completely) alone.

At the end of my trip, I sat (alone again) by the water, now at W Costa Rica's gorgeous Playa Conchal, and reflected on what I learned. It's natural to feel lonely sometimes, especially as a single 30-something living by herself in a big city. But if I learned anything from Nicoya, it's that - even when loneliness does strike - we're never truly alone. It's our job to call upon those doorbell friends and show up for others the same way (if only to sit with them and do nothing on the couch).

My trip to Reserva Conchal made me realize that, in many ways, I've already built a village of my own, and it's made up of people who love, trust, and show up for each other. My heart and my calendar are both full, and that's actually a great thing for my stress levels and physical health. Who knows? If I keep it up, maybe I'll be celebrating my 100th birthday with them, too.

Jordan Shalhoub (she/they) is the supervising producer for Vox Media's lifetyle group and has been creating content and digital media since 2012. They started their career as a documentary editor and continued to report and create around real stories that impact real people - at the heart of their experience is a love of storytelling. She also brings to her work a personal passion for wellness through a fitness trainer certification, mental health advocacy, and championing LGBTQ+ rights (and joy!). Currently, they oversee the short-form video program, from strategy through execution, across editorial and sponsored content.

Welcome to Camp Breastie, an Adult Summer Camp Where Joy and Cancer Coexist

Chandler Plante — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 06:00:02 -0700

It's not the kind of club you want to join, but its members are certainly making the most of it. Picture a four-day summer camp style-summit where people from all walks of the breast and gynecologic cancer community come to rekindle their joy and forge lifelong connections. Participants travel across the country, sleep in cabins, and celebrate all weekend long at an event that sold out in less than 24 hours. It's a total vibe and also totally unique, helping survivors, pre-vivors, and caregivers alike find some much needed community. This is Camp Breastie.

It all started in 2017 when Paige More learned she carried the BRCA1 gene mutation. She debated whether to undergo a preventative double mastectomy, scouring the internet for support. "I was very scared and searching online for resources - or at least other people that had gone through this," More says. "I desperately needed somebody that I could look to." Unfortunately, she kept coming up short.

When More finally decided to go through with the surgery, she made a conscious choice to post about it on social media. At first, she just wanted to be someone people could look to - especially her younger sister, who had yet to do any genetic testing. But her videos quickly gained steam within the breast cancer community.

"When I started sharing my story, I ended up connecting with tens, then hundreds, then thousands of other people going through this. And it wasn't just pre-vivors like me - someone who had a preventative mastectomy - but [also] survivors and those with Stage 4 and caregivers," More says. Among the people she connected with were eventual Camp Breastie cofounders Allie Brumel, Trish Michelle, and Bri Majsiak.

Image Source: Courtesy of @fotobdy

"It was all very serendipitous how we all got connected. It was this domino effect," Majsiak says. The four saw how badly the community wanted to connect, and decided to create a space for that to happen. "Paige started organizing these events in New York, and so many people were resonating and coming [to the point] where we were constantly staying well past our allotted time," Majsiak says.

After seeing how successful these local meetups were, the group planned their first retreat: a weekend in the Poconos. At first it was just 10 pre-vivors (like More and Majsiak) and 10 survivors (like Brumel and Michelle). "We got ski tickets donated, and we just had the best time," Brumel says. "When we came home, there were just so many messages from other Breasties being like, 'When's the next retreat? How can I come?'"

"Hey, what if we rented out a summer camp?"

Realizing they had already outgrown their one-off ski retreat, the group decided to think bigger. They applied for nonprofit status in 2018 and did five retreats their first year . . . then 10 the next. Still, the waitlist continued to grow. "We were like, 'Hey, what if we rented out a summer camp?' - 500 people will fit," Brumel says. And just like that, Camp Breastie was born.

Back in 2019, Camp Breastie took a few weeks to sell out. This year, it reached full capacity in less than two hours. So what is it about this retreat in particular that feels so special? And if you're planning on attending, what can you expect from a weekend at Camp Breastie? Here's what to know.

Image Source: Courtesy of @fotobdy

What to Expect From Camp Breastie

With almost 200 programs to choose from, it's hard to describe a "typical weekend" at Camp Breastie. More calls it a "pick your own adventure." After you get off the bus and find your designated cabin, you can choose to attend discussion panels (hosted by breast cancer researchers and members of the community). Or maybe you'll start the morning off with a cold plunge, a swim in the lake, or some movement in the form of mobility training, pickleball, or even a Beyoncé-themed dance class.

"There are so many needs in our community," Michelle explains. "There are some folks that have just finished grueling treatment. They haven't been able to connect with their people, they don't look like they used to. They're a little self-conscious about their bodies, and they just need to connect and rest. And so the experience for them is maybe just coming to camp and sitting on an Adirondack chair by the lake and just having cool vibes and conversations with people."

"All of a sudden, people are embracing their scars."

Depending on your goals for the weekend (camp starts on Thursday and ends Sunday), some may find themselves among Stage 4 survivors and thrivers, jotting down notes about recent innovations, surgical interventions, and treatment options. Others might trade friendship bracelets, take an art class, or work quietly on a crochet project. The most important thing is that Camp Breastie will always meet you where you're at.

As with any large gathering, Brumel knows some might be worried about making friends or being the odd one out. "Some Breasties have never met another Breastie before, and there's this buildup and hype," she says. "You might worry, 'Oh, there might be cliques and people who know each other and have done this before,' but when you step off the bus, it's literally just a line of people hugging," Brumel says.

At the end of the weekend, Camp Breastie hosts a "Breastival" featuring a DJ, food trucks, multiple activations, and a pride parade (seeing as camp takes place in June). The Breastival has a different theme every year, and the Breasties come dressed accordingly. "All of a sudden, people are embracing their scars," Brumel says. The difference between how people arrive at Camp Breastie versus how they depart is staggering.

Camp Breastie Tips

If you're planning on attending Camp Breastie yourself, there are a few pro tips to keep in mind. "I experienced great, wonderful communities in my life, but Camp Breastie takes it to a whole new level," one Breastie wrote in the r/BreastCancerSurvivors Reddit thread. Their advice? Pack a few extra blankets and pillows if you have trouble sleeping.

"The beds are legit camp cabin beds, for kids," the commenter said. "And it was June, but it's in the mountains, so it gets pretty cold at night." If you're particular about your iced latte, you might also want to download a delivery app just in case. (Camp Breastie supplies food and coffee, but everyone has their specific preferences.)

A typical ticket to Camp Breastie costs $350, but the founders award 250 scholarship tickets to Breasties that identify as BIPOC, LGBTQ+, Stage 4, or in financial need. "Our dream is to one day have camp free for everyone, and multiple camps," Majsiak says.

What Do People Get From Camp Breastie?

Connection and joy are powerful, but so is learning how to navigate a complex medical journey. Michelle says that many Breasties tend to share information about their own healthcare experiences, including specific treatment regimens, medications, and doctor appointments, all of which can help other Breasties become better advocates. "So much of Camp is becoming an advocate, becoming a self-advocate, advocating for your own best care, [and] advocating for greater care for the entire community," Brumel says.

That said, the full impact of Camp Breastie goes far beyond concrete medical care. "What starts at Camp Breastie truly transcends into so many other parts of their lives," More says. After a stay at Camp Breastie, the change is visible. "People say in their post-event surveys that their friends or families or partners have told them, 'Oh my gosh, I got my partner back,' or 'I got my friend back,' or 'I got my sister back,' or 'I've seen a new side of you that I've never seen before,'" More says.

"It's not just about one weekend, it's not just in this space. It truly changes you as a person."

Chandler Plante (she/her) is a staff writer and PS Fit Producer. She has over six years of industry experience, previously working as an editorial assistant for People magazine, a social media manager for Millie magazine, and a contributor for Bustle Digital Group. She has a degree in magazine journalism from Syracuse University and is based in Los Angeles.

When a Pro Athlete Gets Breast Cancer at 29, Nothing Makes Sense

Alexis Jones — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 06:00:02 -0700

Jen Beattie is a footballer to her core. She's played for club teams like Bay FC, Manchester City, and Arsenal over the last decade. But her football career began with the Scottish Women's Premier League at just 15 years old. So when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in her late 20s, the thought of her soccer career coming to halt was "traumatic," Beattie tells Popsugar.

"I was 29 with no family history. It caught me completely out the blue," she says. Beattie was initially diagnosed after discovering a lump under her breast in October 2020. She told the Arsenal doctor at the time who referred her to a specialist for a biopsy and Beattie's stage 1 diagnosis was confirmed.

The entire experience felt foreign to her, Beattie says. "We're so accustomed to normal athlete injuries. You hurt your hamstring and you get an MRI, and you get told exactly what it is and how long it's going to take to rehab." With breast cancer, nothing felt intuitive. "I had no education," Beattie says. "I didn't really even know what a mammogram was or what the machine looked like or [what] a biopsy was," Beattie says.

Fortunately, her cancer care team allowed the Arsenal team doctor to attend appointments and treatments to take notes and relay the information to family, while her manager informed the team of Beattie's diagnosis.

"My teammates were absolutely incredible. They're the ones that got me through it. They're the ones that allowed me to talk about it when I needed to, or to just be Jen the footballer on different days. And for me, that was amazing mentally to just be able to still do my job for a large majority of the treatment," Beattie says.

The soccer star trained and played up until her lumpectomy, then she was out for about six weeks after surgery and had two weeks of radiation. "Getting outside every day and getting to run around and do my job helped in so many different ways, physically and mentally. It helped me just feel normal and escape from what I was going through."

"When you're going through something hard and your brain spirals to the worst-case scenario, it's so important to kind of keep it on track."

Beattie also started cancer-specific talk therapy during treatment and continued for six months afterward. Doing so helped her process some of the negative self-talk that would come up regarding success of the treatment, recurrence, etc. "To remain logical in that time was one of the most difficult things," Beattie says. The therapy she did was useful in keeping her thoughts grounded. "When you're going through something hard and your brain spirals to the worst-case scenario, it's so important to kind of keep it on track. So I found [therapy] to be massive," Beattie says.

Once Beattie got a grip on her own reality, she turned outward to see how she could help others cope and learn more about breast cancer and the possibilities of early-age diagnosis through organizations like Pink Ribbon Good.

"I've done a few walk and talks with patients that are going through treatment, where we go for walks outside to understand the health benefit of getting outdoors and walking and talking to your friends, and how much that can help offload some really tough stuff that's going on upstairs," Beattie says.

She's also been adamant about educating her teammates on the power of breast education. Prior to retiring, Beattie partnered with Sutter Health to bring a portable mammogram van and a team of nurses to give a breast health 101 talk for Bay FC players. "They got a tour of the mammogram van, and just saw that what the machine was like, so that nothing's overwhelming. So that if and when they ever do need to go for a check or a routine checkup or a mammogram, they know what to expect," Beattie says.

Ultimately, "it's all one big learning curve" due to gaps in the education system, especially around early-age breast cancer and how to spot the signs, Beattie says. "It's such an important piece that we need to get in schools and to kids from an early age, because we as adults still don't know enough."

Alexis Jones (she/her) is the section lead of the health and fitness verticals at Popsugar, overseeing coverage across the website, social media, and newsletters. In her eight-plus years of editorial experience, Alexis has developed passions for and expertise in mental health, women's health and fitness, racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare, and chronic conditions. Prior to joining PS, she was the senior editor at Health magazine. Her other bylines can be found at Women's Health, Prevention, Marie Claire, and more.

A Surprise Pregnancy, a Metastatic Breast Cancer Diagnosis, and the Long Journey Ahead

Lanear Snell — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 06:00:02 -0700

I was in a hotel room in Reno when I found my first lump. I've always been a small-chested girl. So when I woke up one morning with breast pain and a lump in my right breast, I noticed. I got up from my hotel bed and went straight to the bathroom to check things out. It was like nothing I'd felt before. I immediately told my husband and he suggested I get it checked out when I got home from my work trip. At the time, I was working as a flight attendant.

The week I got home, I went to see my primary care doctor in McDonough, GA. I was told that the lump looked peculiar and that they wanted to send me elsewhere for a mammogram. It was during intake that I was asked to do a pregnancy test (as pregnancy and breastfeeding can make breast tissue denser, which interferes with a mammogram) - the pregnancy test came back positive. So they decided to do an ultrasound instead. I was surprised by the news - this was in November 2016 and I'd given birth to a son a year prior, in September - but I didn't even have time to process the pregnancy at the time. I was so focused on the potential cancer diagnosis lingering and eager to get the ultrasound results.

Nothing alarming showed up on the ultrasound. In fact, I was told that everything was fine and it was likely linked to >breastfeeding and hormone changes from the new pregnancy.

By December 2016, I was still feeling the same pain though. They did a second ultrasound, and again, no red flags. So I just went on thinking, "OK, everything is fine." But as the symptoms lingered I grew more concerned. In January 2017, I went to see my ob-gyn for a routine checkup and asked her to look at the lump. She agreed that it felt abnormal and referred me to a breast specialist.

I ended up getting a biopsy done on Valentine's Day 2017. The next day was a weekday; I'd transitioned to the airline's corporate department, and I was working in the office when I received a phone call. When I picked up the phone, a nurse, Jennifer, spoke to me. "Hi Mrs. Snell, I'm calling with your results from your biopsy. I wanted to let you know that it is cancer," I remember her telling me. She told me I'd need to come back into the office ASAP.

I'd never heard of a pregnant woman doing chemotherapy before. I knew I was resilient. But I didn't know about the little baby in my belly.

At that moment, all the air in my body just left. I walked outside in the middle of February. I didn't even think to grab a jacket. I just needed the fresh air. I remember walking around in the parking lot, trying to make sense of what I was being told, trying to bring myself back into my body. Everything after moved very quickly. All of a sudden I had a whole team of doctors: an OB, an oncologist, a surgeon, a specialist for the baby. Fortunately, I felt really supported and seen through it all.

Lanear Snell and her baby.

My healthcare team all came together and talked amongst themselves to develop a treatment plan that was as seamless as possible. Of course I had also become an honorary medical doctor overnight - googling everything. I had tons of questions, especially about the safety of the baby. I'd never heard of a pregnant woman doing chemotherapy before. I knew I was resilient. But I didn't know about the little baby in my belly. I asked if we could start treatment after the baby was born, but my care team feared that my cells were too aggressive. They assured me that starting chemo in the second trimester then stopping treatment in the third was the safest thing for the baby.

So I had four cycles of chemotherapy administered intravenously every three weeks during my second trimester. My mom and aunt went to every single appointment with me. Of course, I had my bad days experiencing side effects of both pregnancy and chemo (fatigue, hair loss, weight loss). But for the most part, I made it a point to stay positive and would accept nothing less from the people around me.

I would tell my friends and family, "No, I'm not OK. I wake up in the morning, I take a shower, and I fall apart. However, the moment I step outside of the shower, my day has to go on." I needed them to go on as normal, too, because I didn't want my baby to feel any sort of stress or uncertainty - not from me or anyone else around me. Fortunately, they all got the memo.

Unfortunately, at 20 weeks pregnant, I learned that the original tumor had shrunk but the cancer had metastasized to my spine (mid and lower back). Still, I held on to hope. For some reason, I'd convinced myself that the test was wrong and that the bone scans they were unable to do while I was pregnant would show something different. In my third trimester, I focused on healing and preparing my body for delivery, trying to gain weight and eating enough for me and the baby (something I'd been struggling to do while undergoing chemo).

In July 2017, I delivered my daughter via C-section. They removed my fallopian tubes that same day to prevent another pregnancy. I didn't want to have another baby, and my cancer was hormone-receptor- and estrogen-receptor-positive cancer, meaning it uses hormones like estrogen and progesterone to grow; both increase dramatically in the body during pregnancy. I remember feeling a sense of relief when it was all over. I had a healthy baby girl, 10 little fingers, 10 little toes. She was awesome. When we took her home from the hospital, I felt like I had reached the finish line. I delivered this healthy baby, and now I could fall apart.

But I couldn't. A few weeks later, I went in for some scans and learned that the cancer had spread to my jaw, sternum, spine, and tailbone. They weren't active, but they were present. So I was placed on oral chemotherapy medication and will continue to be on maintenance drugs for the foreseeable future. My journey with metastatic cancer is ongoing, and will be for the rest of my life, but it's taught me a lot about myself, including how strong I am.

If there's one piece of advice I'd give to others going through a metastatic cancer diagnosis, it's that you are still in control of your health. For me, that translated to the people I chose to surrounded myself with. I know that my emphasis on keeping my spirit high and the attitudes of those around me positive was crucial to my health outcome. I even found a support group for young women with cancer, Painted Pink, which I'm still involved in today.

In this next phase of my cancer journey, I've transitioned into a supportive role, as my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer after me. It's a mixture of emotions for me really. I'm surprised because she's older and I thought if she was going to get breast cancer that would have happened before me. I'm sad because I know the road that she's gonna have to go down. But also I feel a little validated - like my journey is not for naught. I went through this first. I did it. I know what to expect. I know the sadness that comes with it. Now, I can hold her hand because I've been here before.

- As told to Alexis Jones

"Mastectomy Moons" Are Helping Patients Find Peace Before Surgery

Chandler Plante — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 06:00:01 -0700

With certain diagnoses, grief is inevitable. How you cope with it is up to you. In 2012, Michele Kraus Bennett tested positive for the BRCA1 gene mutation, which indicates an increased risk for breast cancer. Nearly a decade later, after years of screenings, MRIs, mammograms, and blood tests, she finally scheduled her preventative prophylactic mastectomy for Dec. 1, 2021 . . . along with a road trip across the West Coast. "I was like, 'I'm going to go show my boobs a bunch of stuff,'" Kraus Bennett tells Popsugar. "'I'm going to go show my boobs Joshua Tree.'"

These kinds of "mastectomy moons" might seem a little unusual from the outside looking in. To some, the lead-up to a major surgery isn't the most opportune time for such an impromptu vacation. But for people like Kraus Bennett, there's peace in these moments of spontaneity - not to mention a unique opportunity to grieve, celebrate, and escape on one's own terms.

The trip was partially inspired by Kraus Bennett's actual honeymoon in 2020, which also involved a road trip. "We loved it so much, and at every moment in life, I always think: Is this an opportunity to do something really memorable and big?" After planning her mastectomy, Kraus Bennett had the same thought. "This is something I could just pass by, or I could really celebrate and mark this moment and do something exciting." Thus, her pre-surgery road trip was born.

Image Source: Courtesy of Michele Kraus Bennett

Kraus Bennett's trip started with a flight from Portland, OR, to Los Angeles. From there, she and her husband rented a sprinter van and started making their way across scenic camp sites along the West Coast. In various Instagram galleries documenting her journey, Kraus Bennett describes rugged rocks and blue skies, quiet mornings and peaceful hikes, soft sunrises and cold sand.

"As it turns out, I had cancer on the road trip, but I didn't know," she says. "We camped at this place called the Alabama Hills and we were all alone in the campground . . . it was like $8 a night. It was so pretty, and we would just go on walks in the evening." Throughout her trip, she also explored Death Valley, went horseback riding, visited Meow Wolf Omega Mart in Las Vegas, had breakfast in Palm Springs, saw the Hoover Dam, and spent time at Disneyland. "I took my bra off in the bathroom before Tower of Terror," she laughs. She looks back on the memories fondly.

Image Source: Courtesy of Michele Kraus Bennett

Kraus Bennett says the road trip allowed her to find some levity in a dark situation. But it also gave her space to come to terms with all the changes that were about to take place. "The other night, floating around in the pool, waving my arms around, I tried to feel the cold water on my chest, and feel how my breasts float, because that will change," she wrote in an Instagram post from Nov. 18. As a synchronized swimmer, the grief felt especially heavy. "I remember standing in the shower and being like, 'I'm not going to feel the water on my chest,'" she tells PS. "I have to soak this up."

"I went on this trip and really did something special."

When her operation finally came around, Kraus Bennett went in with a clear mind and a calm soul. "There's nothing else I can do to prepare. I feel really good about this decision," she thought to herself. She credits the mastectomy moon for helping her step into this mindset. "I made the choice and I went on this trip and really did something special," she says. "It was really nice to be celebrated and get to say goodbye."

Everyone is operating under different circumstances. But if you have the means to schedule a trip before a similar surgery or major life change, Kraus Bennett would definitely recommend it. "I think stuff like this is always a good idea," she says. Beyond all the fun memories, it also helped her approach a longer health journey in the best headspace possible.

"I felt like I was as majestic as the places we were visiting," she says. "It gave me so much more peace and happiness."

What No One Tells You About Sex After Breast Cancer

Molly Longman — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 05:55:02 -0700

On Dec. 2, 2015, Erin Burnett was two days out from her wedding and existing in the buzzy state of bliss that's reserved for people who are very much in love. That morning, as she was happily daydreaming in the shower, she noticed something was different about her left nipple. She took a closer look - it seemed to be inverted. She felt an immediate chill; the sudsy water suddenly felt like ice.

She called her doctor, who said Burnett could come in during her lunch break to get her breast checked out, just as a precaution.

After some testing, the doctor told Burnett to come back after her wedding day. She tried to put the experience out of her mind until after the ceremony. Just 12 days after tying the knot, at 28 years old, Burnett got the call. She had stage II, triple-positive, invasive ductal carcinoma. Her honeymoon would be cut short.

The diagnosis impacted Burnett's life in myriad ways - but a major factor was the impact on her sex life. "I had a brand new marriage, with no honeymoon phase," she remembers. "I used to joke around with my friends and say: 'You guys are having these crazy sex lives where someone pulls your hair, while my husband's picking my hair up off the ground.'"

Burnett underwent a double mastectomy and a hysterectomy, which induced what's known as medical menopause. "I didn't know until it happened that I was gonna have vaginal atrophy, vaginal dryness, pain with intercourse, lack of lubrication, and lack of libido [following the hysterectomy]," she says. She also faced emotional hurdles, especially as she coped with losing her breasts and went through painful attempts at reconstruction.

Throughout the treatment process, Burnett and her medical team were so focused on saving her life that her quality of life often took a backseat. In particular, the quality of her sex life was not top of mind for her or her providers.

This is a common refrain from cancer survivors, who say that the medical establishment tends to leave out or breeze through conversations about the ways cancer can impact your sexual health, especially because they're rightfully so laser-focused on keeping you alive. But this can have serious ramifications for people's sexual health, mental health, and relationships, says Ericka Hart, MEd, a sex educator and breast cancer survivor. "They're usually not concerned about the ways that you are gonna experience pleasure in the future, they just want to fix you - and in their mind, cancer is the issue they're fixing," they say.

This often puts the onus on patients to bring up questions about how their diagnosis and treatment will affect their sexual health.

Anna Crollman, a 37-year-old breast cancer survivor from North Carolina, remembers feeling incredibly nervous about asking her provider about the sexual side effects, such as painful intercourse, she was experiencing during and after her treatment. "I like to call it the 'doorknob question' that you squeeze in right when they're about to leave and their hand's almost on the door," she says. "You say: 'Hey, just one more thing.'"

But if sexual health is brought up earlier and more often by providers, it's not only easier for patients to discuss their issues when they're ready to do so, but also for them to find more satisfaction with sex in the long run - and to feel less alone, says Don S. Dizon, MD.

It's common, especially for women and nonbinary people, to blame themselves for sexual health issues and feel they have to suffer alone. "Most of the people I see feel like they're the only ones going through this," he says. "When I tell a person, 'This is really common,' there's a weight lifted off their shoulders because [until then,] they think they've done something wrong."

But patients shouldn't be deterred from seeking information about improving their sexual health, despite cancer, and they shouldn't have to work up extra courage to get answers. As Dr. Dizon puts it: "Everyone deserves a sex life."

Experts Featured in This Article

Ericka Hart, MEd, is a sex educator, breast cancer survivor, and author of "Nasty Work."

Don S. Dizon, MD, is a professor of medicine at Brown University and director of the Sexual Health First Responders Clinic at Lifespan Cancer Institute.

Emily Nagoski, PhD, is a sex educator and author of "Come as You Are" and "Come Together".

The Physical Impacts Cancer Can Have on Sex

Breast cancer treatments can dampen physical desire in several ways. Breasts are an erogenous organ, Dr. Dizon says, and oftentimes a mastectomy is required as part of treatment. "The loss of breast-specific sensuality is something everyone will go through to some degree," he says. "The process of naming that is really important, because people don't consciously think of the breast as a sexual organ, and it is."

Meanwhile, for those with hormone-positive breast cancer, doctors often prescribe drugs called aromatase inhibitors that lower estrogen levels, causing medically induced menopause. "These notoriously have a negative effect on sexuality, whether it's vaginal dryness, painful activities, or loss of desire," Dr. Dizon says. "Chemotherapy can also harm body image, because people gain a lot of weight, and it can cause neuropathy and physical side effects like nausea and diarrhea."

As patients know, these physical impacts can take a real toll.

Shonté Drakeford, a nurse practitioner and patient advocate in Maryland, was diagnosed with stage four metastatic breast cancer in 2015, after being dismissed by providers for six years when she presented with symptoms. Drakeford says that before her diagnosis, her sex life with her high school sweetheart was "amazing."

For the first two years of treatment, she had no major sexual side effects, though she had to be careful about what positions she took part in, as the cancer had spread to her lungs, lymph nodes, ribs, spine, and left hip. "I asked my doctor what I could do that wouldn't harm me, physically, because I was fragile," she remembers. "He got all red and was embarrassed to answer."

About three years into treatment, Drakeford noticed that her libido had lessened, and she was experiencing vaginal dryness. "Even though, mentally, I wanted to [have sex], my mind and vagina didn't connect," she says. "It was like a slow transition into a menopausal state." This was due to her treatments, which she couldn't stop. "I'll be on treatment forever; this is lifelong for me," she says. "I wish they had Viagra for women."

Drakeford's doctors told her that vaginal estrogen therapy - which some menopausal people use to help with some sexual side effects - wasn't an option for her; her cancer was hormone-positive, so it essentially fed on hormones like estrogen. "It's all about safety," Drakeford says. "Am I willing to risk my health for sexual satisfaction?"

Cancer Can Cause Mental Health Barriers to Satisfying Sex, Too

Beyond these physical questions, mental hurdles are also prevalent amid cancer treatments. Many of us have ideas about what sex "should" look like, and those are challenged by a life-changing diagnosis like cancer, says Emily Nagoski, PhD, a sex educator.

Hart says that they felt "disconnected from their body" after their cancer diagnosis, something that they believe to be common for other survivors, but that looks different for everyone. As they were being treated for breast cancer in 2014, they struggled with how their body was constantly being touched, especially by white medical staff. Hart, who is Black, found that this challenged their understanding of bodily autonomy and lead to them distancing themself from their romantic partner, who was white. "I didn't want a white person to touch me sexually," they remember.

Hart says that something else shifted following their mastectomy: they felt like people could no longer see them as a whole person - they only saw Hart's illness. At one point in their healing process, Hart went topless in public, baring their double mastectomy scars to end "the lack of Black, brown, LGBTQIA+ representations and visibility in breast cancer awareness." As important as this messaging was, Hart felt "de-sexualized" by some of the responses their display elicited. "People would see my topless pictures and respond: 'Oh my God, you're so inspiring,'" they say. "But if anybody with nipples went topless on the internet, that would not be the response."

This is a commonly felt sentiment among breast cancer patients - they feel society begins to see them only as patients, rather than sexual beings. Hart points out that you rarely see sex scenes with cancer patients in the media. FWIW, the only one I could think of was in "Desperate Housewives," which involved a somewhat superficial plot about Tom feeling uncomfortable having sex with Lynette when she wasn't wearing her wig, and Lynette fearing it meant he was no longer attracted to her. (This is a real fear among patients, though Dr. Nagoski notes: "In a great relationship, we're attracted to the human being we chose to be with, not to the body parts of that human. It's normal to have feelings about changes to our bodies and our partners' bodies, of course, but a strong relationship adapts to those changes with love and trust.")

Meanwhile, Crollman, who was diagnosed with cancer at 27, adds that the mental barriers to sex after cancer were "the hardest part." "The pain, of course, is physically uncomfortable, but even though my partner and I tried so hard to stay in open communication, the reality was, we went through a very, very dry spell," she says. "I was feeling really lost, mentally. I went through a deep depression, and I was seeing a therapist to cope because I really didn't feel comfortable in my body." After having a double mastectomy, Crollman felt "vulnerable" being in front of someone else while she was still "struggling to come to terms with the body that I had."

Plus, not being intimate for a period due to these understandable challenges led to "more physical triggers and trauma around that experience - around the fear of it, around the pain that was related to it because of the side effects," Crollman remembers. "So it was kind of this multileveled, emotional, psychological challenge."

Finding Pleasure Again Post-Diagnosis

The physical and emotional stressors surrounding sex are very real, but reframing can help cancer patients to work through them. "The stakes around treatment certainly may be high, but the stakes around sex are not" - or at least, they don't have to be, Dr. Nagoski says.

Although our culture tells us we can somehow "fail" sexually, especially "if we don't perform according to some external, bullshit standard, the reality is there is nothing to lose, there is no way to fail," Dr. Nagoski says. "We only imagine we're doing it 'wrong' when we compare our experiences to some bogus cultural script of what sex 'should' be like - a script that was always irrelevant to our lives, but after a cancer diagnosis is just an absurd, pointless, and even cruel standard against which to assess our sexual connections. There is nothing at stake with sex; you have nothing to lose, only pleasure and connection to gain."

Pleasure can look different to different people, and sex is just one piece of it. In order to maximize satisfaction for all parties involved, Dr. Nagoski says you first need to get on the same page as your partner - and that means getting curious. "If your partner wants sex, ask each other these important questions: What is it that you want, when you want sex with each other? And what is it that you don't want? When don't you want sex with each other? And, perhaps most importantly, what kind of sex is worth having - as in, what makes sex worth not spending that time watching 'Parks & Recreation'?"

Also, "You could decide to take all sex entirely off the table," Dr. Nagoski says. "That's a legitimate choice." Hart adds that some couples may decide to open up their relationship amid cancer.

However, many people with cancer do want to try to explore sex and pleasure again, whatever that looks like for them. But because there are so few good resources out there and so much stigma around the topic, they may do so with varying levels of success.

Hart, for example, discovered that kink and BDSM was a sexual space of healing for them. "After being poked and prodded and having surgeries and chemotherapy literally once a week with a giant needle, I wanted to go into spaces where I could reclaim that pain," they say. "So doing things like impact play - being consensually spanked and hit - I could reclaim the pain after years of feeling like I didn't have a choice of opting into it."

Hart also recommends working with a sex therapist to find pleasure again, which may include finding ways to incorporate chest play after a mastectomy, whether you still have nipples or not. Dr. Nagoski recommends the book "Better Sex Through Mindfulness" by Lori Brotto, who specializes in sexual health interventions for those with cancer and for survivors of sexual trauma.

Dr. Dizon adds that some healthcare providers might be more comfortable pointing their patients to resources rather than giving them actual advice about their sex lives, so asking your doctor if they have recommendations for something to read or a support network you could join might be a smart tactic for finding the support you seek.

Drakeford says she hasn't been shy about asking for resources but still hasn't felt satisfied with the level of pleasure she's experienced since her diagnosis. She's tried vaginal moisturizers, lube, and sex toys and hasn't seen much success. "I even tried that slippery elm herb - it did nothing. Not a thing!" Drakeford says. "I've been going on nine years without things improving. I hope researchers can get on this and find something that actually works for people like me . . . even if it's not during my lifetime."

Burnett, for her part, has tried to be intentional about pleasure from the very beginning - though it hasn't been easy.

While she was undergoing chemo, Burnett says, she and her partner scheduled sex around treatments. "The first couple of days after chemo, your body's pretty toxic, so you aren't going to be intimate," she says. "Then seven to 10 days after is when you're at your sickest. So for us, it was usually around that two-week mark that we'd schedule time to be intimate, before the next round."

Since going into medical menopause, Burnett's tried multiple tactics to make sex post-breast-cancer more pleasurable with her partner, including lubes, moisturizers, and laser therapy. (Dr. Dizon notes it's important for those with breast cancer to find options that have specifically been studied in people with breast cancer, not the general population.) She also had to mentally get used to the changes in her breasts - though getting a mastectomy scar tattoo helped her regain some confidence, both in general and in the bedroom.

Although Burnett didn't get the honeymoon phase she'd always dreamed about, she did learn quickly that she'd found a partner who'd keep every word of his vows. "There is something really intimate about someone who can be there for you and hold your hair back as you're throwing up, and pick it up as it's falling out," she adds, nodding to her old joke about her friends having their hair pulled.

The couple's 10-year anniversary is coming up next year, and they're planning to finally take that honeymoon they never got. "It'll be a different kind of honeymoon, because my body is just different from most other 36-year-olds out there. But it will also be a celebration of surviving 10 years."

Molly Longman is a freelance journalist who loves to tell stories at the intersection of health and politics.

Paris Hilton Gets Candid About Embracing Her ADHD: "I See It as My Inner Sparkle"

Paris Hilton — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 11:15:03 -0700

Being in school was always difficult for me. No matter how hard I tried, I was constantly in trouble for not getting good grades and not being able to remember things. Because there aren't many studies done on women, people see ADHD as the boy in school who can't sit still in class. But ADHD is different for everyone. For girls, you can be successful and ambitious and high functioning, but have a lot of turmoil on the inside. It can be very overwhelming and you always have this voice in the back of your mind telling you you're not good enough. You internalize the labels that adults and teachers put on you. I constantly felt misunderstood and underestimated.

In school, I always daydreamed. If something was boring, I could not pay attention. But for subjects I loved, like art or music or drama, I really excelled because I could hyper-focus on them. Instead of getting punished in school, I wish my teachers had spoken with me or asked different questions. It's hard being a kid and not having anyone to support you. I feel like the systems of school were not built for minds like ours. Even today, it's getting better, but there's still so much work to be done.

In my 20s, people started talking more about ADHD. My friends were getting diagnosed, and I started learning more about it. When I spoke to a doctor and got diagnosed myself, it was such a relief to finally know that there was nothing wrong with me. It's just the way my brain works.

"I wouldn't be the entrepreneur I am today without my ADHD."

I've always been a risk-taker, an innovator - doing things first. I feel like that's why I've been a pioneer in so many different areas, from reality TV to becoming the first influencer . . . things that were really ahead of my time. I wouldn't be the entrepreneur I am today without my ADHD. I see it as my inner sparkle.

What made the biggest difference in my ADHD was speaking to my doctor, getting prescribed JORNAY PM, and finding a treatment plan that worked for me. Now, I can take my medication at night and it starts working when my day starts, which has been such a meaningful change. I can focus on my kids and what really matters to me in life, rather than feeling chaotic in the morning.

In school, my ADHD was more about not being able to focus. But now - as a mom and an entrepreneur – there are definitely a lot more responsibilities. It's important that I'm organized for back to school, especially with getting the kids ready and setting everything up the night before.

My tips are to find a treatment plan that works for you, speak with your doctor, and put systems in place that help you. Like having calendars and certain places where you can put your phone or your house keys so you're not losing things. I have notepads all over the house in every room, so I can write down ideas that come to my mind. Take time in the mornings to center yourself and breathe. When it gets really overwhelming, focus on the beautiful things in your life and your family. Everyone's life is different, but having those tools is really important.

I want to give people hope and inspire them to follow their dreams. Don't be too hard on yourself and know that you're not alone. There's nothing wrong with you - it's just the way your mind works.

- As told to Chandler Plante

I Tested Brain-Adaptive Earbuds to See If They Could Improve My Sleep

Chandler Plante — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 15:45:02 -0700

I don't play about my sleep. My bedtime routine begins promptly at 9 p.m., at which point I make my way over to my red light mask, magnesium pillow spray, and a perfectly-curated playlist of ASMR. Up until now, I've solely relied on my Oura ring to see how well I slept the night before (don't talk to me if my readiness score is below an 80). But when I heard about a pair of brain-adaptive earbuds that could actually improve my sleep quality, I knew I had to try them for myself.

Most similar wearable devices track sleep by measuring cardiovascular changes via light sensors. This method is known as photoplethysmography (PPG). NextSense Smartbuds ($299, originally $349), on the other hand, use electroencephalography (EEG) which records electrical activity in the brain. "As you calm down and eventually fall asleep, your dominant brainwaves literally get slower," says NextSense's head of product Caitlin Shure, MA, PhD. "We are tapping into those brain signals directly, which are also the same kind of signals that are being looked at if you get a sleep study in the lab."

In NextSense's case, this looks like earbuds with tiny sensors monitoring brainwaves. But the buds also claim to deliver real-time stimulation to enhance deep sleep (more on that later). Intrigued, I tested the Smartbuds to see if they really could improve my sleep . . . and possibly earn a permanent spot in my top-tier nighttime routine. Here's how it went.

My Smartbuds Experience

Initially, I had some reservations about wearing earbuds to sleep. Would they be uncomfortable and cause me to toss and turn? In my experience . . . not really. Although the earbuds are definitely more comfortable for back and belly sleepers, I also wore them on my side. (Pro tip: you can choose to wear only one earbud if it's more comfortable for you.)

One of the first tips Dr. Shure gave me was to carve out time for onboarding. It's imperative that the Smartbuds fit your ears properly (they come with different sized attachments) so that the sensors have a strong signal to your brain. Somehow, I still managed to mess this up. My first night with the earbuds, I wore a size too big, and the app promptly advised me to try a smaller size in the morning. After finding my right fit, I got a look into my slow waves - the deep pulses of electrical activity associated with restorative processes.

To break it down, a night with more slow-wave activity means increased feelings of restoration and better cognitive performance. So basically, "everything that you would associate with a really good night of rest," Dr. Shure says. Truthfully, I had never considered this element of my sleep before. But as I thought back to all the times I felt unrefreshed despite getting eight hours of sleep, it started to click. The Smartbuds showed me my slow wave count, total wakes, and overall sleep efficiency every night, and as it turns out, I was getting way less restorative sleep than I previously thought.

"It's very subtle, it doesn't wake you up."

As you prepare for sleep, you can use the Smartbuds to unwind with a meditation or box breathing exercise. Or, for those of us who are already sufficiently unwound (hi, it's me), you can jump straight into a soft hum of pink noise or relaxing rain sounds. Once you drift off, the buds utilize a method called slow wave enhancement to actually upgrade your sleep. They do this by employing targeted pink noise while you're unconscious, gently nudging your brain waves into a more restorative pattern.

"The wearables that have been popular for the past decade have really banked on the fact that your primary use of them is to look at the data . . . but then it comes back on you to improve your situation," Dr. Shure says. With slow wave enhancement, your earbuds are doing some of the work for you. "This happens when you're unconscious," Dr. Shure explains. "It's very subtle, it doesn't wake you up." And after wearing the earbuds for myself, I agree.

Smartbuds Takeaways

It's still too early for me to say whether the slow-wave enhancement definitively improved my sleep. But knowledge is power, and the insights I gleaned from the Smartbuds certainly helped me iron out my routine, from giving myself permission to hit the hay a little earlier, to identifying factors that may have affected my deep sleep waves each night (for better or for worse).

"We're seeing about half of our users reporting improvements in, yes, sleep quality, but also mood and energy," Dr. Shure says. "So not just the sleep itself, but the next day benefits that you would hope to see if your sleep is better." Indeed, in trying the Smartbuds for myself, I saw my Oura sleep score hit "above average" numbers, which was a huge win for me.

If you're not someone who can sleep with something in your ears, Smartbuds also have settings for restorative practices like meditation and focus. But all said, I'll definitely be continuing my evening earbud experiment for smarter, sleepier nights.

20 Years Later, I Still Need Body Positivity

CeCe Olisa — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 05:45:03 -0700

This story is part of our Aughts Effect package, which celebrates 20 years of Popsugar - and enduring culture. Read all the stories here.

It was 1999. I was watching MTV when I saw exactly what I wanted to copy: Mariah Carey in her "Heartbreaker" video in those low-rise jeans, the waistband cut clean off. I ran to my closet and cut the waistband off my own jeans, feeling like I'd cracked some fashion code. But I couldn't bring myself to show my belly at school, so I put a longer shirt over them anyway, hiding everything.

Being a plus-size teenager in the early 2000s taught me that girls with bodies like mine didn't get the happy ending. Not the guy, not the dream wardrobe, not visibility in the glossy version of adulthood I watched on big and small screens. Every rejection, every uninvited comment, every closed door became proof that my weight made me unworthy. Half the racks I wanted to shop didn't carry my size, which felt less like an inventory problem and more like the world telling me exactly where I didn't belong.

That anxiety did not stay in one place. It got dressed with me every morning and followed me from high school into college. Then, around 2006, body positivity found me one night in a downtown Manhattan nightclub, when a mutual friend invited me to a spot where plus-size women weren't the exception in the room, they were the room. I found out later that "BBW clubs" like it existed in major cities all over the country. In those clubs, I wasn't any smaller, but I felt like my weight just stopped being a liability. I wondered, genuinely, what it would feel like to carry that mindset outside those four walls and into the rest of my life. The first time I tested it was a halter dress at a party, no cover up in the bag as backup, which felt less like fashion and more like showing up somewhere without your keys.

Here I am at the 2006 "BBW club" that changed everything. Image Source: Courtesy of CeCe Olisa

While the BBW parties ultimately weren't my scene, an inclusive, body-positive space like that changed everything for me. I began to explore radical ideas like not covering or hiding my body, and I started to write about it on my website.

Women started leaving comments. Then emails. Then their own stories, unprompted, like they'd been waiting for someone to go first. I didn't realize I wasn't alone until women started telling me they felt the same way. I hadn't been writing into the void. I'd been writing into a room full of people I just hadn't met yet.

Those essays became conversations. Those conversations became friendships. Those friendships became a community I could actually stand inside of. In 2015, that community became The Curvy Con, a plus size fashion convention during New York Fashion Week. One weekend a year, your body stopped being a liability and became the standard. That's the culture that gave me new language for myself. "Big" girl became "plus size" girl, which felt more fashion mag than family reunion, and I said it like a fact I was proud of, because I was.

I was more proud of my body than I had ever been. I built a whole life around the idea that I shouldn't wait on my weight to live the life I wanted, and for a while everything aligned: my confidence, the culture, even the clothing racks, which had finally started carrying my size without making me hunt for it in a back corner.

While I embraced my body, I also told myself that health was a practice, not a pant size, and wellness never needed a smaller number to count, so I made fitness and healthy living a priority without weight loss as a goal.

My first bikini photo, showing arms, legs, and tummy, is still the one I'd choose first if I could only keep one from my whole body-positive awakening. It was taken right before the world shut down for the pandemic.

My favorite bikini pic. Image Source: Courtesy of CeCe Olisa

That confidence carried me through the pandemic mostly intact. The world outside my apartment was suddenly talking about health the way I'd been talking about it for years, out loud, without shame, like it belonged to everyone. My knees did not fare as well.

In 2023, my doctor brought up GLP-1s like he was recommending a restaurant. "You should really try these," he said.

I was still fully on my body-positive soapbox, thinking about identity and community and what it would mean to trade being a plus-size girl living her best life for being an obesity patient seeking treatment so she could continue to live her best life. Those felt like two different women to me. It took longer than I'd like to admit to understand that I am not obese. I have obesity. One is an identity. The other is a diagnosis I could actually treat without losing my body-positive values. I told my doctor I wasn't sure. He kept a sample pen at his office for weeks with my name on it. I know this because I refused to pick it up for weeks.

What changed my mind wasn't the mirror. It was a number. When I learned that every pound you lose takes four pounds of pressure off your knees, I picked up the pen from my doctor. The healthy habits I had built as an act of love for my plus-size body, and the medication, turned out to be a great combination for my well-being and longevity.

Weeks later, I ran for a subway car the way I hadn't run for anything in years, and stood on the platform a little stunned that my own knees would let me do something like that.

My weight had started with a three for most of my life, then a two. Now I'm closing in on what some of us call Onederland, 199 pounds, the place where the number in front finally drops below two. You would think this is the part where my desire to show my body gets louder. It's the opposite. Loose skin has me fighting the urge to cover again, except this time I have a body-positive mindset protecting my confidence.

Nobody warns you that when it comes to loving your body, there isn't a finish line, just new ways to keep loving it through the transition.

Image Source: Courtesy of CeCe Olisa

In high school, I thought a happy ending meant low cut jeans and a flat tummy. In my twenties, it meant a liberated body and finally being seen. Today, it means loving myself into longevity so I can enjoy the life body positivity taught me I already deserved.

I write about my GLP-1 journey publicly because I'm hopeful that those of us who lived through the body positivity era won't look back on it as a failure now that some of our bodies are changing again. I'd rather we carry it forward, into whatever phase our bodies move through next, the way I'm trying to carry mine into my loose skin era.

Somehow we've still ended up with shame on both sides of this conversation: some women fearing plus size erasure, others staying quiet about a treatment they may need because they're afraid of being judged by a community that means everything to them. Neither kind of shame is fair, and neither deserves to win.

What gives me real hope is smaller than any of that. It's the questions women in my own community ask me lately, not how to hide something, but which leggings actually hold up, which shoes are worth buying for a longer walk. That shift, toward longevity, toward simply being around longer, might be the best happy ending any of us could ask for. Girls with bodies like mine do get the happy ending. It just took me 20 years to understand the ending was never about the size of the body. It was about a life well lived.

CeCe Olisa is a trailblazing voice in inclusive health and beauty, dedicated to inspiring women to embrace self-care with confidence. As a certified fitness instructor and the founder of Cocoa by CeCe, she blends personal experience with expert insight to make health and beauty joyful, accessible, and empowering.

Gen Z Providers Are Rewriting the Rules of Medicine

Alexis Jones — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 06:00:02 -0700

Tiffany Nguyen isn't a regular healthcare provider, she's a cool one. With a tooth gem on her top left incisor and vibrant acrylic nails, she's approaching the world of healthcare from a wildly authentic perspective - in true Gen Z fashion. Nguyen has 24.8K followers on TikTok, where she's built a community as "your pre-med older sister" and shares real-talk tips about becoming a physician assistant.

She's also part of the latest Gen Z healthcare providers entering the workforce and reshaping what it means to hold a career in this field. They're not chasing the "Grey's Anatomy" fantasy of a provider who lives at the hospital and has no personality outside of their white coat. Like most generations, this one has its stereotypes, but these young healthcare workers are breaking them daily, embracing this role with authenticity, balance, and a life beyond the hospital. Lucky for us, we get to watch them document it all as they show us what it means to build a career in medicine without leaving themselves or their patients behind.

The Stories They Carry

Nguyen's online persona is bold and bubbly, infused with Gen Z humor. But it only tells part of her story. At 24 years old, the PA-in-training documents her daily life on social media while carrying the weight of her family's experiences with her.

Nguyen was raised in a first-generation Vietnamese immigrant household with her mom and grandma, neither of whom finished formal education. "I have seen what it's like to not be represented in healthcare," Nguyen says.

"I want to be the PA who represents the Asian American, low-income, non-English speaking identities."

"My grandma doesn't even know how to read. My mom didn't even finish high school. . . . I haven't seen any medical provider that looks like me in Ohio since I've grown up and to be taken care of [by] medical providers who don't represent or look like you and who don't understand the language that your whole family speaks . . . it's isolating."

Nguyen has been the de facto medical advocate of the family since age 10, often translating complex diagnoses, treatments, and care plans. It's what led her to volunteer at the Asian Free Health Clinic during her time at Ohio State University and ultimately to pursue a career in medicine at the University of Southern California.

@firstgenpa
#paschool #medstudent #premed #medtok #nursingstudent
♬ original sound - TIFFANY NGUYEN, PA-S :D

"I want to be the PA who represents the Asian American, low-income, non-English speaking identities," Nguyen says. "And I know that when I speak, I carry my family and my patients' voices with me."

When asked if the weight of that responsibility ever feels overwhelming, she responds immediately: "I'm constantly driven by the quiet power of representation." But that sense of responsibility was even more resonant when Nguyen became a patient herself after suffering a hemorrhagic stroke (brain rupture) in April. The incident left her temporarily immobile and unable to speak. Her biggest concern during recovery? Money. "My mind was not fully conscious in the ICU right after the brain surgeries that I had, but it was conscious enough to be worried about how much is this going to cost?" she says. "As a first-generation, low-income student, I'm constantly calculating . . . even healing felt like a luxury that I could not afford, and so I carry that with me wherever I go."

Nguyen's story challenges some of Gen Z's most common stereotypes of being lazy, self-absorbed, or fragile. Aishwarya Addepalli, a 27-year-old second-year resident, views her generation as the complete opposite.

"They think that you're young and not necessarily as disciplined or mature," she says. "But I think it's actually the other way around." She considers her generation to be deeply self-aware, shaped by the context around them, and driven by a strong sense of purpose.

A Generation That Refuses to Choose

Gen Z is one of the most resilient generations, Addepalli says. "We've gone through a lot" - from the era of 24/7 social media access to the educational and social disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic. "We've gone through so much change in the world during our lifespans," Addepalli adds.

"We still deeply care about people, patients, but we're also more intentional about surviving and taking care of ourselves."

It was just six years ago that Addepalli was in her junior year of college, quarantined at home and doing Zoom interviews for medical school. That's when she started making dance content like the rest of us, lonely and confined. Only hers was good - and it went viral. One of her most popular videos - a Bharatanatyam-style combination to Doja Cat's "Woman" - garnered more than 18 million views, 2.7 million likes on TikTok, and a Spotify cover image. But Addepalli didn't start dancing on social media for recognition. She's been dancing Bharatanatyam since she was a kid, and it has always served as a mental health resource, especially now as she's in residency as an anesthesiologist.

"Dance was always an outlet for stress, for physical health, and it was honestly very meditative as well. I talked about this even when interviewing for medical school," she tells Popsugar.

@aishuadd
the duality of being a dancer girlie in medicine #chalant #telugu #doctor #medicine
♬ original sound - Playboi Teluguabbayi

That's the thing about being a Gen Z doctor-slash-creator: unlike generations past, they're unafraid to bring their whole selves to work and prioritize who they are outside of the job. "I try not to think of it as better or worse, we're just different as a generation," Addepalli says.

"We still deeply care about people, patients, but we're also more intentional about surviving and taking care of ourselves," she adds. In other words, "instead of making our career our entire life and personality, we use other aspects of our lives to help us become better at our careers."

Take Erica Ogwumike, a 28-year-old resident physician, as an example. Although she pursued medicine, athletics has always been central to her life - she comes from a family of elite athletes, including WNBA standouts Chiney and Nneka Ogwumike - and she didn't give that up to be a dermatologist. In fact, Ogwumike majored in health sciences, policy studies, and Spanish while pre-med and playing Division I college basketball; competed in the Tokyo Olympics while in medical school; and has been a content creator documenting it all since 2018 with 93.5K followers on TikTok today.

"In my generation, it was definitely emphasized to be very multidimensional and to not limit your interest just because you want to be a doctor," Ogwumike says.

And while Ogwumike may be on the extreme side of multidimensionality, her colleagues aren't too far behind. "You'll have doctors who were ballet majors, dance majors, art history," she says. "And yes, that did exist before, but I think now it's becoming way more the norm."

@ericathemd
def due for our quarterly FaceTime chats, yall I’m about to be half way done w residency!!! nuts #dermresidency #updates #sephorahaul #doctor #skincare
♬ original sound - Erica The MD

Happy Provider, Healthier System

This work-life-passion balance Ogwumike alludes to is one of Gen Z's biggest strengths. It's a side effect of growing up in a time "where wellness was prioritized," she says. "I can't think of a time in college or high school where wellness wasn't a part of our curriculum and emphasized."

In generations past, Ogwumike says healthcare providers went above and beyond to live up to the term "resident," working round-the-clock to meet the 19th-century expectations of the always-on provider. For Ogwumike's generation, things are much different.

Not only are there work-hour rules to prevent overworking, but she and her colleagues just don't subscribe to the old mentality. And that doesn't make them any less qualified to do the job. In fact, conversations with these three providers suggests the opposite: drawing clear boundaries between work and the rest of your life doesn't signal a lack of commitment - it's what allows them to show up fully for their patients. For anyone who has felt dismissed by a healthcare provider, that couldn't be more important.

"I want to help my patients to the best of my ability, but at the same time, I know I can't help them if I don't take care of myself," Ogwumike says.

In other words, this generation of healthcare providers is all-in on well-being - not just for their patients, but for themselves. They refuse to sacrifice identity, passion, or health for this job. Instead, they use those three pillars to make themselves even more empathetic, capable, and well-rounded providers. Welcome to the Gen Z era of healthcare. Any one else excited to be here?

Alexis Jones is the section lead of the health and fitness verticals at Popsugar, overseeing coverage across the website, social media, and newsletters. In her seven-plus years of editorial experience, Alexis has developed passions for and expertise in mental health, women's health and fitness, racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare, and chronic conditions. Prior to joining PS, she was the senior editor at Health magazine. Her other bylines can be found at Women's Health, Prevention, Marie Claire, and more.

Why We're All Sweating on Antidepressants

Ayana Herndon — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 12:15:01 -0700

This summer, I expected to spend my time lounging at the beach, enjoying rooftop parties, and taking long walks in nature. But just a month into the season, the only thing I'm doing a lot of is sweating. According to TikTok, my antidepressant is to blame: creators have been speaking up for weeks about their sweaty summer on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), validating and normalizing others who find themselves suddenly overwhelmingly hot.

"Being mentally ill for the summer is not for the weak. I'm legitimately in hell, dying. How are you people on SSRIs not passing out or keeping cold?" one TikTok user said in a June post. The post has over 90,000 likes and 3,000 comments, including "My underwear gets drenched from how much I sweat" and "On Zoloft, the night sweats are the worst thing to ever happen to me."

Another post on the app from the same month with the headline, "pov: it's 95°F out, and you're on lexapro" featured the caption, "I take 3 showers a day in the summer." Comments under the post were similarly detailing the same hot experience, from "Yes dude, I feel like I'm boiling inside," to "The overheating is literally insane !!!"

To be honest, I've never felt more validated. In 2023, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported an estimated 11.4 percent of people over the age of 18 in the U.S. took some form of antidepressants. But what's the science behind all of the sweating? According to psychiatrists, just because you're hot and taking SSRIs doesn't mean the antidepressants are to blame: heat intolerance isn't a direct side effect of taking SSRIs. But a certain hormone may be at fault. Here's what the experts had to say.

Experts Featured in This Article

Agnes K. Simone, DO, is a California-based psychiatrist, the founder of Olea Women's Health, a boutique women's health practice, and the founder of Psych Practice Co., a consulting company for psychiatrists.

Brook Choulet, is an Arizona-based psychiatrist who specializes in sports psychiatry and the founder of Choulet Performance Psychiatry.

Can Antidepressants Make You Sweat More?

I've been taking the SSRI Zoloft since 2023. When initially asked what the biggest side effect of the medication was, my answer used to be, "You stay alive." In the early stages of taking the antidepressant, I was just thankful the medication made me feel like myself again, effectively treating my depression. But this summer, I'm experiencing intense sweating and feeling way hotter than usual.

"[SSRIs] can interfere with your hypothalamic thermoregulation (the body's thermostat). But it's not typical to have significant heat intolerance with SSRIs," says Brook Choulet, MD, a psychiatrist specializing in sports.

While antidepressants may not directly cause heat intolerance, they can increase serotonin in the body - and serotonin can affect the body's ability to regulate temperature, says Agnes K. Simone, DO, is a California-based psychiatrist, the founder of Olea Women's Health. "Theoretically, if you're increasing serotonin with the SSRIs, that's going to affect the ability to regulate internal temperature. People can end up feeling hotter than average, which can lead to sweating."

This heat sensitivity or intolerance can cause excessive sweating, dizziness, and fatigue. To add another layer, heat intolerance often occurs in temperatures others may find normal. "My patients experience this: the increased sweating, especially night sweats, and, overall, feeling more hot," says Dr. Simone.

How to Deal with Sweating on SSRIs

From my daily scrolls on TikTok, I've picked up many tips on dealing with heat intolerance - from eating electrolyte ice pops to cool yourself down in a pinch, to using anti-friction body powder to reduce sweating through your clothes. If you're looking to develop your own SSRI summer routine, TikTok user alliyahpau made a post in June showcasing the products she relies on, including carrying a mini fan with a cooling plate and a neck fan.

Here are my personal recommendations for curbing summer sweating on SSRIs:

Change your bedsheets twice a week.
Only drink ice-cold water.
Keep paper towels in your bag to pat your forehead for random internal heatwaves.
If you can, keep the air conditioner on high for a little longer.
Use dry shampoo on your roots before stepping outside.
Setting your makeup with a matte fixing spray to soak up the excess sweat.

On the expert side, these psychiatrists have a few recommendations too when it comes to surviving an SSRI summer:

Limit your time outside on hot days and avoid being in direct sunlight for extended periods.
Stay properly hydrated. The daily recommendation is still six to eight glasses a day (or 64 ounces).
Consult your psychiatrist if the heat sensitivity worsens. There could be another medical issue at hand.

"Depending on the severity or how intolerable the sweating is, I will lower the dose of the medication or switch to a different SSRI/antidepressant. If they're really bothered by it, we should do something about it," Dr. Simone says.

With any changes you may experience while taking SSRIs, you should always let a doctor know to explore all the possible causes. If you're experiencing an increased intolerance to heat specifically, Dr. Choulet recommends examining your thyroid. "Look for a medical cause of why you feel hot. Maybe get your thyroid checked, as thyroid issues can impact core temperature," she says.

Ayana Herndon is a New York City-based freelance writer and graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. She has a passion for amplifying voices of color through her writing, which spans fashion, beauty, and lifestyle. Her work has appeared in PS and Women's Wear Daily.

Celiac and Crohn's Made Every Meal Feel Like a Risk. Here's How She Healed.

Alexis Jones — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 06:00:03 -0700

Lauren Murawski was a freshman in college in 2017 when she began to experience digestive problems. "After I would eat, I would start to 'baby barf,'" she tells Popsugar, explaining that she'd essentially burp up her food. It happened so often that her friends started calling her "the burpologist."

At first, the GI issues weren't a red flag to Lauren; she just thought they were a sign of the stress she was under at the time. "I was having a bit of a difficult time with the adjustment with school and was going through my first breakup," she says.

But then, her GI symptoms worsened. She began experiencing severe stomach aches, and the baby barfing turned into projectile vomiting. She also started to lose weight inexplicably.

Knowing she needed to get help with her health, Lauren decided to leave her Massachusetts college and enroll in school back home in upstate New York to be closer to her support system. Once she was back home, her dad, a nurse, scheduled a gastroenterologist appointment for her, and she underwent a series of blood tests.

In January 2018, Lauren was diagnosed with celiac disease.

At first, Lauren says she felt relieved by the diagnosis of celiac, which is an immune reaction to eating gluten and can cause diarrhea, bloating, nausea, and vomiting, among other symptoms, according to the Mayo Clinic. "I was like, 'Yay, I finally have my answer.' Now, all I have to do is eat gluten-free and I'm going to feel better," she says.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be only the beginning of what Lauren calls the "worst journey" of her life.

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Despite changing her diet and doing everything to avoid gluten and cross contamination, "my symptoms kept getting worse and worse and worse," Lauren says. Her bloating was so bad that she appeared pregnant, and "one day, I vomited 17 times in a row," she tells PS. She was also having eight to 12 bowel movements a day, which she knew was abnormal.

She went back to to her gastroenterologist, and the office ran several tests to see what the problem might be. "I went through weeks of just going to the hospital, going to the doctor's - and at the time, I'm in college, so I'm not really having the college experience that I was looking to have," Lauren says. But even more disappointing was that after all of the testing, Lauren was told that the results showed nothing new.

But Lauren refused to accept that everything was fine. "I was like, 'What the heck is happening here?'" Fortunately, her doctor decided to do one more test: a colonoscopy. That found inflammation in her small bowel, a potential sign of Crohn's disease, a type of inflammatory bowel disease.

he results were borderline - there was some inflammation; not enough to give a definitive diagnosis of Crohn's, but too much to definitely be a result of celiac alone. "They told me that I was a very difficult case," Lauren remembers.

Her healthcare practitioner suggested putting Lauren on steroids to see if her symptoms would subside, and her quality of life was suffering so much that that she was willing to give them a try. When they didn't work, Lauren underwent another colonoscopy. This time, she got an official Crohn's diagnosis, and her doctors suggested a stronger course of treatment.

Lauren started getting infusion treatments for Crohn's disease in March 2019.

"They put me on Remicade, which is an infusion drug . . . I would go to the hospital, they would put an IV in my arm, and I would sit there for three hours every three months," Lauren says. But even with the new medication, she struggled to find relief.

"I kept telling my doctor, 'I swear, I feel like I'm going crazy - nothing is working, and I feel more sick,'" Lauren says. But Lauren says her concerns were dismissed. Her care team kept telling her, "This should be working." "I just felt like nobody cared," Lauren says.

At that point, she decided it was time to get a different opinion. Lauren spent the next three years seeking the help of several different experts, from doctors to dietitians, and collecting new diagnoses along the way: small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO); E.coli; irritable bowel syndrome. She was also undiagnosed, then re-diagnosed, with Crohn's, and eventually taken off Remicade.

The healthcare practitioners she saw often tried various new treatments to address her symptoms. Some were helpful - an antidepressant she was put on helped ease her bloating to a degree, she says - while others were not.

A restrictive eating plan her dietitian put her on, for instance, led to Lauren developing an eating disorder. While elimination diets can be helpful for some people with GI diagnoses to identify the foods that trigger their symptoms, the method didn't work for Lauren, who says it harmed her relationship with eating in general. The dietitian placed "toxicity on certain food groups," like fruit, she says. Lauren recalls standing at her blender for 15 minutes just crying over the fruit she'd put in it and how it might interact with her body.

"I was so scared to eat. When I didn't eat, I felt really good. So I was like, 'Well, if I don't eat, then I'm not gonna have symptoms, and then there's nothing to worry about,'" Lauren says. "No one should have to think about eating food like that and be so scared of what's going to happen."

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Finally, Lauren decided to take her health into her own hands.

After all of the different healthcare practitioners and treatments, Lauren was still dealing with gut inflammation, throwing up, and frequent bowel movements. So in April 2022, over four years after she was first diagnosed with celiac, she went back to her gastroenterologist and was met with disappointing news: one, that he had run out of options and two, that he believed these symptoms would probably be something she'd have to deal with for the rest of her life.

Lauren couldn't accept that there were no other options for her. After leaving the appointment, she started doing her own research and looking into holistic remedies that might help.

The first thing she changed was her exercise routine. Lauren used to do HIIT workouts and cardio several times a week, hoping to offset the bloating she often experienced. "I used to sabotage my body because I was like, 'I'm feeling bloated, that means I need run more and do more cardio,'" she says. "But in reality, my body just need to rest and be able to heal."

She began prioritizing exercise associated with stress reduction - namely, yoga. "I started going to hot yoga like four to five times a week," she says. Research has shown that yoga can improve IBD symptoms, including psychological side effects like stress and anxiety.Lauren also got honest with herself about her eating disorder, researching ways to restore her love of food: "If I didn't acknowledge that I was scared of food to myself, then I wouldn't have been able to take the first step to even try to heal from it."

Little by little, Lauren started reintroducing her favorite foods back into her life. "For me, it was choosing a food every week, and challenging myself to eat it," she explains. She started with small portions, just enough to help her assess whether the food was going to trigger her symptoms, and she journaled what she ate so she could better spot patterns (something her doctors had never suggested she do, surprisingly). While she eventually overcame the fear that every food was going to upset her stomach, it wasn't easy - and looking back, Lauren says she wishes she'd sought professional support to help her manage the process.

After about four months, Lauren was able to figure out some of her top trigger foods, including carbs, garlic, onion, and natural sugars. "So I couldn't have large amounts of fruit," Lauren says - but she didn't have to cut it out entirely either. She also prioritized more gut-friendly foods and ingredients (peppermint tea became a go-to reliever), as well as an overall whole-food diet.

Six months after that, she noticed a significant reduction in her symptoms, and within a year, Lauren felt like she finally had her GI issues under control. She was still getting regular blood tests for her celiac disease, but had stopped taking other medications. And in learning to listen to her own body for cues rather than relying strictly on medicine, she says that she has been able to put her Crohn's disease (a form of IBD) and IBS in remission.

Ultimately, Lauren and her doctors agreed that she had Crohn's disease, celiac, and IBS - but so far, restorative exercise and avoiding her trigger foods by sticking to a non-inflammatory, whole-food diet has helped her stay in remission. Using functional medicine techniques to address inflammatory bowel diseases, like Crohn's disease is not all that uncommon, either. In fact, research has shown that functional medicine (e.g. making adjustments to lifestyle, environment, relationships, sleep, stress, and nutrition) can positively contribute to high-quality, personalized IBD care that results in improved health and optimized function for some people. The same can be said for using a more integrated approach to managing IBS, as research has also shown that removing irritating foods, improving overall nutrition, and prioritizing stress reduction can help reduce IBS flare-ups and reduce symptom severity.

While Lauren's diagnosis journey has come to end, she never forgot how alone and abandoned she felt throughout the process, sparking her decision to create online and in-person resources for others. Now, Lauren is focusing on fostering a community for those searching for answers and trying to manage the same conditions, posting her experiences on social media and hosting in-person meet-ups. Advocacy and raising awareness has become her full-time job. "I was able to quit my 9-to-5 and do this full time and I just love it so much," Lauren says. "It's a very rewarding position to be in."

Alexis Jones is the senior health and fitness editor at PS. Her passions and areas of expertise include women's health and fitness, mental health, racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare, and chronic conditions. Prior to joining PS, she was the senior editor at Health magazine. Her other bylines can be found at Women's Health, Prevention, Marie Claire, and more.

Selma Blair Talks "Bed Days," Medical Gaslighting, and Living With MS

Alexis Jones — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 10:00:02 -0700

Selma Blair has always been an iconic actress - from her breakout role as Cecile Caldwell in "Cruel Intentions" to the iconic Vivian Kensington in "Legally Blonde." But never did she anticipate having to use her skillset to cover up a chronic condition.

Then, Blair was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2018 and surprisingly, a doctor encouraged her to keep it hidden. Blair recalls the doctor saying, "You don't want to tell people about this . . . you know people have judgments or you'll have trouble finding a job."

At the time, Blair was filming "Another Life" for Netflix, working hard to ensure her condition stayed under wraps, hiding her fatigue and tics. "It was the wardrobe stylist who actually dressed me and actually implemented a cane into part of my wardrobe and did all these things so I could keep my secret," Blair tells Popsugar in a recent conversation about her partnership with Sollis Health. Once she started showing more noticeable symptoms, Blair says her MS became too difficult to hide and she decided to go public.

"I didn't have any idea how big the response would be and how many people that had chronic illness or MS were afraid to talk about it or share because they didn't feel empowered or sexy or pretty or young anymore," Blair says. "It really just kind of changed my whole personality of wanting to talk about it and find out more from other people, because frankly, doctors didn't have all the time."

"I'll still have days where my balance is off, or my vision's just not gonna come together that well, and I have to kind of stay put in my house."

Finding a supportive and affirming medical team has been the toughest, yet most impactful part of her journey. "I'm finally, after this many years, feeling at peace with my medical team around me, including Sollis, and my new MS doctor that I've had for a few years," Blair says. She's now partnering with Sollis Health, a concierge immediate care provider to raise awareness about alternative healthcare systems, medical gaslighting, and managing high-stress moments as someone with a chronic illness.

"I'm a single mom and I have a chronic condition, and I kind of developed a little bit of small traumas over spending a long time with doctors or waiting [for results]," Blair says. In joining Sollis, Blair has gained access to 24/7 emergency physicians and a new peace of mind. "I have someone that I can talk to that can take the time to say, 'No, let's test you right away.'" This is kind of care should be the standard, Blair argues - but in opening up about her MS, she knows it's far from the norm. And even with her level of care, Blair says she still has to take to take the good days with the "bed days." Even relapse-free, she deals with symptom challenges: "I'll still have days where my balance is off, or my vision's just not gonna come together that well, and I have to kind of stay put in my house."

"I still wish that I had the ability to spend a whole day out until bedtime and could feel amazing and get all these things done . . . I'm someone that does have to take breaks when I get overwhelmed, instead of throwing the towel," she says, especially when she's on a project. "I know I have to take 40 minutes and just shut down."

Her honest advice to anyone navigating a major health diagnosis right now: don't go it alone. "I'm sorry, I do have to say, life is going to be hard. If you can, have an advocate to come with you to make going to the doctors easier until you find the one that really will listen to you." And even then, still consider bringing a loved one along because the odds are often stacked against women.

In a November 2023 study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, researchers spotlight the "gender-pain exaggeration bias wherein perceivers believe women, relative to men, to be emotionally dramatizing and therefore more likely to exaggerate versus downplay their pain." In reality, this fear of being labeled hysterical can actually cause women to downplay their own pain. Blair says she's experienced both: the gender-pain bias and minimizing her own symptoms.

"Even after [being] diagnosed and even after there was real flares and real evidence, there's still doctors that I felt dismissed [by] or my symptoms aren't important enough, or, 'Oh, that comes and goes so I shouldn't bother talking about it,'" Blair says

But you should never feel like you're settling when it comes to your health, Blair says. There's more often than not always something more than can be done: whether that's testing and getting and MRI, trying a different treatment method, or addressing alternative financial options. Keep pushing, she says because, "things can be done." She adds, "Being able to communicate with your doctor is the only way you're going to find bigger help."

I Have PCOS, and Here's How I Feel About Its New Name

Elsa Cavazos — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 06:35:02 -0700

As someone who was diagnosed with PCOS at the age of 18, it's easy to say I follow sufficient content about the disease to have learned about its recent name change right away. My social media feed was inundated with the news. What for years was a big question mark - and then had a proper name - is now being changed to Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome, or PMOS.

I'll be honest, my first thought was, well, when do we get a cure? When do we get meds to get rid of this for good? But after my frustration and my immediate need to vent on Instagram Stories, I realized the upside: it opens up the conversation, one which was previously shut down often if cysts didn't appear in an ultrasound.

The name change also now includes the words "metabolic" and "endocrine," encompassing two different areas of the chronic disease which are the most affected. In fact, anyone who's had to deal with PMOS symptoms likely knows that having "cysts" is the least of the problems sometimes. For example, I don't know if I still have cysts; they were never a significant issue for me either. My period was always regular, cramps are painful but not unbearable. But because the cysts appeared on a screen, my diagnosis was confirmed. And years later when they weren't "seen," I was told I didn't necessarily have PCOS - even though I struggle with hirsutism, struggle to lose weight, and sleep apnea, among other symptoms often ignored.

The fact remains that the medical community has struggled to properly manage and handle this disease for years. I have seen so many gynecologists and endocrinologists who, to this day, do not appear to know the right treatment plan for me.

But this name change is indeed a step forward - one towards earlier diagnosis, hopefully more research, and a continuous plan to better understand this complex, frustrating disease. Every body is different, and PMOS does not look the same to everyone, which is why taking the step to remove "cystic" from the name helps better capture the ways this disease can manifest itself.

Life with PMOS can feel like an incessant to-do list: We are told to work out - but not too hard because of cortisol levels. We are told to sleep eight hours a night, yet have insomnia and racing thoughts that keep us awake at night. You can have fruit, but not too much because you might be insulin resistant. You can have carbs but not too many.

The last time I saw a gyno, we explored the possibility of me having Cushing's syndrome, a rare hormonal disorder caused by prolonged exposure to excess cortisol or triggered by pituitary or adrenal tumors. I ultimately ended up testing negative, and though part of me was fearful of a new diagnosis, another part of me welcomed the freedom of not having PMOS.

In speaking to other women with PMOS, I've found others feel similarly about the name change, which feels like a small win in a tiring battle. One woman, Yisel Reyna, said she never had cysts, and so because that symptom was missing, getting the proper diagnosis took much longer. Andrea Cortazar struggled with the birth control she was given to "handle" her cysts, giving her side effects that made her other symptoms worse. For Cortazar, adding the endocrine and metabolic part to the name allows for a better understanding of what could be wrong.

Language can be a tool to raise questions and look for answers. In its renaming, PMOS may no longer be treated monolithically. May this be the change needed to continue evolving the conversation and, hopefully, developing more individualized treatments. We may have a new name, but we'd also like healing.

Elsa Cavazos is a freelance writer based in Napa, CA. Her work has appeared in Vogue Mexico, Harper's Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Teen Vogue, Marie Claire, and other publications. Her translation work has appeared in publications such as The Texas Tribune and The Guardian.

They Were All Diagnosed With Cancer - Then Came the Breakups

Chandler Plante — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 06:30:03 -0700

Breakups never really come at a "good time," but ending things mid-cancer diagnosis might just take the cake. Some quick stats: women are six times more likely to end up separated or divorced if they are diagnosed with cancer (as compared to male partners). Another paper studying 2,701 different marriages found that only measures of a wife's illness onset were associated with a higher risk of divorce. These numbers indicate a concerning trend: when women need their partners most, cracks start to form.

For cancer breakups specifically, patients are tasked with fighting both an incredibly physical battle, and an emotional one. The grief is two-fold, and the healing process often feels especially heavy. Getting through a breakup mid-treatment is no small feat - but it's not impossible either. To shed light on the hardest parts, the silver linings, and the lessons learned, we spoke to three survivors who have gone through a cancer breakup themselves.

The Breakups

Three months prior to Mairead Ryan's breakup, doctors feared her breast cancer had spread to her brain and spinal cord. Thankfully, this turned out to be false. But it was at this point that Ryan's partner started to express concerns about the "longevity" of their relationship. "He wanted to get married, have kids, move to the suburbs, and felt like me having stage 4 breast cancer was inhibiting him from doing so," Ryan tells Popsugar. "Simply put, he broke up with me because I have stage 4 breast cancer."

"Being cheated on was so much more painful than cancer."

This sudden switch up is something Emilee Aubrey can relate to. Shortly after receiving a bone marrow transplant for leukemia in October 2021, she caught her boyfriend messaging one of her close friends, offering to come over, and even soliciting explicit photos. "Being cheated on was so much more painful than cancer," Aubrey says. "I just would never even think to do that to someone."

Zee Valentina describes her breakup as a more mutual decision, but it wasn't easy either. She broke up with her partner of 11 years just one month after being diagnosed with stage 4 Hodgkin's Lymphoma. "Going through chemotherapy simultaneously, I really couldn't handle any extra stress," she says. "I had to quickly accept it for what it was, because I had a [bigger] battle to focus on, which was my battle against my body."

The Immediate Aftermath

At first, the hurt and betrayal from these cancer breakups left each woman with unanswered questions. "How could someone who told me they loved me unconditionally put conditions on our love?" Ryan found herself asking. "Did he not think I wanted the same things in life too? Did he not think this was hard for me - the one going through breast cancer?" Valentina says the heartbreak mostly left her empty and numb. "[With] all my medical problems happening in parallel, I felt like I really did hit rock bottom."

A week after her breakup, Aubrey visited a palliative care doctor. "I was just a wreck. He was like, 'We should discuss getting on antidepressants,' because I was just so upset and hurt." It's not that she was entirely without support - her friends and family were still there for her. It just felt different now. "It wasn't the same as having conversations every second with someone that cared . . . or I thought cared," Aubrey explains. "I was literally [at] the lowest point of my entire life."

The Healing Process

The grief from a cancer breakup can feel overwhelming, especially in the early stages. But these survivors will be the first to tell you that healing is possible. In fact, Valentina thinks being forced to sit with her grief might've actually helped in the long run. "It's a really tough situation to be in, [because] on top of all the medical problems happening at the same time, you're not able to distract yourself much," she says. "We are forced to face everything all at once."

For Aubrey, antidepressants played a big role in helping her process the stress of her breakup and cancer journey. "At that time, I thought that I still had cancer," she says. "Finding out I was in remission was a big turning point." Still, she says healing emotionally was harder than healing physically, and working through both things at once was difficult and uncomfortable.

Ryan agrees that her cancer breakup felt "cruel and unfair." But as she continued to heal, she also started to learn from it. "If someone is not going to stick by you at your lowest points in life, they surely don't deserve you at any other point," Ryan says. "I think the breakup really made me realize my self worth and what I deserve."

The Reflection

After the breakup, Aubrey remembers her friends assuring her it would "get better" eventually. "In the moment I [was] like, 'I wanna kill you,'" she laughs. "But you know, it does. The people are right. It does get easier." That said, Ryan reminds people that no matter how much the breakup hurts, your health should always come first. "You and your health are [the] number one priority. Whoever is not there to support and make that a priority is not worthy of your love," she says.

To those navigating similar situations, Valentina says to grieve the future you thought you'd have. Healing isn't linear and it's OK to have mixed emotions. "If someone can't accept you for all of you - including your history with cancer or your cancer journey - then they are not for you," she says. "To be able to go through cancer and a breakup at the same time requires a steel amount of strength, and you will have to dig deeper than you ever have to get through. But you will."

Chandler Plante (she/her) is a social producer and staff writer for the health and fitness team at Popsugar. She has over five years of industry experience, previously working as an editorial assistant for People magazine, a social media manager for Millie magazine, and a contributor for Bustle Digital Group. She has a degree in magazine journalism from Syracuse University and is based in Los Angeles.

I Have Chronic Allergies - and the Cure Is Almost as Bad as the Symptoms

Lauren Ramos — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 06:30:03 -0700

Allergies are common - and may be becoming more so. They're a leading cause of chronic illness in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and with climate change making seasonal allergies more prevalent and rates of food allergies rising as well, more and more people are becoming personally affected by the condition, which occurs when the body's immune system reacts to a substance. It can trigger hives, itchiness, swelling, and even anaphylaxis. Here, TikToker Lauren Ramos shares what it's like to live with chronic allergies that significantly affect her daily life.

I've had allergies ever since I can remember. The tip of the iceberg was when I first interacted with cats. I was six and had hives all over afterward. I needed to be medicated, and started taking allergy medicine regularly soon after that.

But when I reached middle school, things started to get really bad. I had asthma and didn't know it, along with seasonal allergies. When allergy season would roll around, it would feel hard to breathe. I also did gymnastics, and I would be wheezing and struggling to breathe all the time. I'd also be sneezing and have itchy eyes all the time. It wasn't anything to the degree it is now, but it was a warning sign of what was to come.

Getting a Diagnosis

I saw an allergist when I was 22 and discovered through a skin prick test that I'm allergic to a long list of things: every type of tree and grass you can imagine, dust mites, dogs, and cats.

Last year, I started getting allergy injections. These are a type of immunotherapy that contains a tiny amount of what you're allergic to with the goal of building up immunity to those allergens to stop or reduce allergy attacks. But my allergies are so bad that I even struggle with the allergy injections.

On my immunotherapy days, I get a shot in each arm. About two hours after I leave my doctor's office, my face turns red and starts swelling, and it can be hard to breathe. My eyes also get swollen and burn, and I feel hot.

I recently switched allergists, so the makeup of my shots have changed as well and I seem to be having better reactions. But there have been so many instances where my reaction is intense enough that I have to get a shot with epinephrine, which helps tamp down on the body's release of histamine, the chemical that causes allergy symptoms. It's happened often enough that my healthcare team has now made it a requirement that whenever I get a shot, I have epinephrine on me.

I still get anxious when I get a shot, because I never know if it will ruin my entire day. I've definitely asked myself several times if the benefits of getting these shots are actually worth how awful I feel afterward. But then I also know that I'll feel lousy all the time if I don't get the shots. It's a tricky situation.

In addition to the immunotherapy, I have a whole "allergy drawer" at home to help with my symptoms. It contains the inhaler I use to help control my asthma (which doesn't always work), special drops for when my eyes get swollen after injections, as well as a nasal spray to prevent post-nasal drip and the sore throats that can come with it. It also has the prescription allergy medication I'm supposed to take - but that makes me feel incredibly drowsy. So I have to decide if I want to have allergy symptoms or fall asleep and miss my day.

Everything is prescription strength. My allergies are so severe that a lot of the over-the-counter stuff doesn't work for me.

Holding Onto Hope

Even though the allergy shot reactions are terrible, I have seen my allergy symptoms get better. I haven't been able to test things around cats or dogs, but I feel better when I'm outside. The only time I have symptoms now is when I get a shot.

I get my injections once a week now; I used to get them twice a week. They should be even more spaced out at this point, but I had to get set back in the shot schedule because of how strong my reactions still are.

The immunotherapy is supposed to be a two-year process, with the shot frequency tapering off to nothing, although it's probably going to take me around three or 3.5 years, and I'm only about a year into it. It's helpful that I'm starting to feel better with my actual allergies, and that motivates me to keep on getting the shots. But I also know that I have to always be prepared so that I'm not freaking out about if I'm going to have a bad reaction.

It's likely that I'll always deal with allergies and allergic reactions on some level. But I know that things have already gotten better - and I'm told they should keep on improving.

- As told to Korin Miller

Korin Miller is a writer specializing in general wellness, health, and lifestyle trends. Her work has appeared in Women's Health, Self, Health, Forbes, and more.

How to Recognize and Combat Medical Gaslighting

Alexis Jones — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 06:30:02 -0700

Have you ever walked into a doctor's office, voiced your concerns to a provider, and essentially been told that it's either in your head or just the result of stress, when you know it's something more? Well, there's a name for what you may have experienced - it's called medical gaslighting.

You may be familiar with romantic gaslighting, which refers to a form of psychological abuse, wherein someone manipulates their partner into questioning their own reality. Medical gaslighting, on the other hand, occurs when medical professionals disregard their patients' feelings or reported symptoms, attributing their experiences to psychological causes (like stress) or denying their symptoms entirely.

It's all too common, and women are more at risk: research shows that one in five women report that a healthcare provider has ignored or dismissed their symptoms. People of color may also be especially likely to experience the phenomenon, which could lead to harmful delays in diagnoses, or worse. In fact, one out of every seven doctor-patient encounters results in diagnostic error - which includes missed, wrong, or delayed diagnoses - according to a study in The Medical Journal of Australia.

At least a portion of that diagnostic error can be attributed to what's known as medical gaslighting, says Vanna Health president Liz Kwo, MD. Ahead, here's what you need to know about medical gaslighting - including why it happens and how to combat it.

Experts Featured in This Article:

Liz Kwo, MD, is a Massachusetts-based physician, the president of Vanna Health, and former chief commercial officer at Everly Health.

What Is Medical Gaslighting, and How Does It Happen?

"[Medical gaslighting] describes the experience of having one's symptoms dismissed by a medical provider," Dr. Kwo says. At its foundation is, essentially, a lack of trust. "When [healthcare providers] don't necessarily trust either the reporter's symptoms or what they're really thinking," that's when medical gaslighting occurs, she explains.

This can stem from a lack of experience or clinical knowledge on the provider's part. A patient may report a host of symptoms that "don't correlate directly back to a potential reason for why this could happen, and sometimes that gets dismissed as overly exaggerating," Dr. Kwo says. Those symptoms may then be chalked up to stress, hormones, or other psychosocial or related factors. But prejudice and implicit bias can also play a role in a physician's tendency toward medical gaslighting.

Who Is Most Affected by Medical Gaslighting?

Medical mistrust, and in turn gaslighting, tends to disproportionately affect women, Dr. Kwo notes. "Female patients are frequently told they're under stress, or have anxiety, or suffer from depression, or the complaints are a result of hormonal cycles - whether menstrual cramps or perimenopause," according to an Association of Health Care Journalists post. "Other women find their symptoms attributed to their weight or to just plain malingering."

Research also demonstrates that women experience more "medically unexplained" symptoms than men, a term that's used to describe symptoms for which there's no clear cause. Studies have shown that up to two-thirds of women in primary care experience medically unexplained symptoms.

"When doctors choose to not investigate a symptom that is significantly affecting a person's life, it not only threatens physical health but also their mental health."

At least part of this discrepancy can be explained by the fact that, in general, women have been studied less than men. "In 1977, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration began recommending that scientists exclude women of childbearing years from early clinical drug trials, fearing that if enrolled women became pregnant, the research could potentially harm their fetuses," per The New York Times. "Researchers were also concerned that hormonal fluctuations could muddle study results." In 1993, a law was passed reinstating the inclusion of women and minorities in medical research funded by the National Institutes of Health.

But the knowledge gap created during the period before this law was passed still exists. A 2014 report out of Brigham and Women's Hospital states that the science that informs medicine today "routinely fails to consider the crucial impact of sex and gender." The failure "happens in the earliest stages of research, when females are excluded from animal and human studies or the sex of the animals isn't stated in the published results. Once clinical trials begin, researchers frequently do not enroll adequate numbers of women or, when they do, fail to analyze or report data separately by sex. This hampers our ability to identify important differences that could benefit the health of all." This has impacted the way doctors understand certain conditions and how they affect women.

Take heart disease, for example. It's the leading cause of death for women in America. But "only one-third of cardiovascular clinical trial subjects are female and fewer than one-third (31 percent) of cardiovascular clinical trials that include women report outcomes by sex," according to the Brigham and Women's Hospital report. This leaves doctors more familiar with male symptoms and unprepared to deal with the varying symptoms women tend to experience, which can lead to exactly the kind of diagnostic error mentioned earlier.

For women of color, particularly Black women, medical mistrust and gaslighting tends to be even more troubling - and direct. In a study published in scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, half of the medical trainees surveyed believed myths about Black patients, like they experience less pain than white patients. When giving birth, Black people experience higher maternal mortality than their white peers, due at least in part to a disbelief in their symptoms. The mistrust of Black patients has even been reflected in the way doctors take notes during visits with Black patients versus white patients. A Journal of General Internal Medicine study found that doctors' notes about Black patients were more likely to contain judgement words like "insists" or "claims."

Dangers of Medical Gaslighting

At best, medical gaslighting is dismissive and can lead to delayed diagnosis and treatment. At worst, like in instances of Black maternal mortality, medical gaslighting can be fatal. Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Factors like variation in quality healthcare, structural racism, and implicit bias, which can all play a role in medical gaslighting, are considered contributing factors.

How to Tell If Your Doctor Is Gaslighting You

Sometimes, medical gaslighting is obvious: you're trying to tell your doctor how you feel or what you think may be wrong, and they are pushing back, writing off your concerns, repeatedly telling you it's normal, or offering up answers that you know don't make sense. But other times, it can be harder to know for sure what's going on. After all, the relationship between medical professional and patient is not an equal one. We're taught to put our faith in our doctors' opinions and advice; to trust them, the supposed experts, over ourselves.

So, Dr. Kwo suggests being mindful of how a trip to the doctor's office makes you feel. Do you leave feeling like you got your questions answered, or do you leave feeling unheard or worse off than when you got there? Dr. Kwo says to be particularly aware of feelings of confusion, withdrawal (as in not wanting to talk or be there anymore), anxiety, and defensiveness during and after your visit. Not every doctor's visit will be perfect, but feeling unheard or dismissed is a red flag.

How to Combat Medical Gaslighting

Dr. Kwo has suggestions for both patients and providers to improve doctor-patient interactions.

For patients:

Don't be afraid to get a second opinion, if possible. If you've been seeing the same provider again and again and they're giving you the same answers and suggestions that you've already tried and haven't helped, it might be worth moving on. If you're able to see a new doctor, try it, and see if you have a different experience.
Keep a symptom journal or diary. Write down the age of onset for your symptoms, how often they occur, and when they tend to worsen, so that you have a thorough track record to bring to your next visit.
Consider at-home self-testing. While this isn't a perfect solution, some tests can be useful in figuring out where your health currently stands, and/or in starting a new dialogue with another physician.
Ultimately, trust your gut. If you feel like you're not getting the care you deserve, seek out information from alternative sources, advocate for yourself, and if possible, look for a new healthcare provider who is a better fit. These aren't always easy or accessible solutions, but when your health is at stake, it's worth pushing back to get the answers you deserve.

For providers:

Everyone presents information differently, especially when it comes to reporting symptoms. Patients of color have a history of medical mistrust. And a patient's delivery of their symptoms can vary depending on culture and ethnicity, age, personality, etc. The onus is on physicians to learn about and study these differences so that they are able to help patients from all walks of life and meet them wherever they are on their trust scale.
Consider the zebras. Physicians tend to think in terms of horses, or common conditions and correlations. "But sometimes there are zebras and you diagnose something that's just not common, but it happens," Dr. Kwo says.
Follow through with your patients. Track their symptoms over time to develop pattern recognition, so that you can be aware of any major changes.

Ultimately, if you have a feeling that your provider isn't listening to you, that's a good enough reason speak up or find someone new. Everyone deserves to feel seen in the doctor's office and health problems shouldn't go unaddressed. It's your health and your right to get the care you deserve.

The Cancer Besties Swapping Support Groups For Friendship Apps

Chandler Plante — Tue, 19 May 2026 19:10:02 -0700

Making friends is hard enough as it is - a cancer diagnosis doesn't make it any easier. While some find comfort in traditional support groups, others are searching for something different, swapping perhaps surface-level bonds for genuine friendships. They want to meet people who have felt their pain, dealt with similar symptoms, and experienced the same hardships firsthand. More than anything, they just don't want to feel so alone.

In this pursuit of kindred spirits, some members of the cancer community are making the switch to friendship apps. One such person, Anita Tran, describes her reasoning plainly. "I joined because I was diagnosed with something so rare and I had nobody around me in person that had cancer . . . or somebody young like me," she tells Popsugar. It was on the app CancerBuddy that she met Mark Sevillano Jr., a friend with stage 2 esophageal cancer. Sevillano Jr. had similar motivations for joining, and was mainly looking to feel less isolated in his journey. "I was just hoping to find someone, or a couple people that [knew] what I was going through," Sevillano Jr. says. "I was like, 'Oh, that sounds kind of cool. CancerBuddy? I need a buddy during this time."

Amaya Matos and Michael Cramer are another friend duo that met on the app, bonding over a serious complication called graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). "We connected on having the same symptoms around the same time," Matos says. "I felt like I could be more vulnerable . . . it feels less lonely." Over time they bonded over a multitude of other interests unrelated to illness, forming a genuine friendship over Fortnite, Lego, fitness, and the Orlando Magic.

To learn more about these connections and the apps making them possible, we asked the people in each friend duo to interview each other. Read on for their takes on friendship apps, navigating a new friendship amid cancer, and how they went from internet strangers to besties IRL.

Anita and Mark

Image Source: Courtesy of Anita Tran and Mark Sevillano Jr.

Why do you think we make such good friends?

Mark: "One, we both smile a lot. And two, I really love that scripture that you posted on your Instagram bio. It's Psalm 138: 8."
Anita: "I'm so glad you like that psalm, because it means a lot to me. It gives me faith that even if I don't know what I'm doing, He has a greater plan for me."
Mark: "Scripture means so much to you, and now I'm going to also think about that scripture, because I want Him to fulfill my purpose. Like, why am I here? Why did I get cancer? Why am I using my voice to help others?"
Anita: "When I first met you, I really admired your advocacy in the cancer community and how quick you were to hop on to opportunities . . . I had my fundraiser, and you showed up. You actually showed up . . . our values and passions align [and] it helps us connect as friends."

What role has our friendship played in your cancer journey?

Mark: "As you know, when you're dealing with cancer . . . you get fatigue, and you just want to sit all day. So I developed that habit, but being friends with you, I'm always looking at your page, and you've reminded [me] about being active and moving and walking and getting my steps in."
Anita: "That fills my heart. It's like a whole circle."
Mark: "And then [also], your positivity. Sometimes I get sad because I'm like, 'Oh, my gosh, I know Anita is going through it. I know she is.' Yet you smile through it. And that just makes me want to cry, because how do you have so much strength in your pain? That's amazing and inspiring, and I just know from going through cancer that it's hard. It's hard to [have] that smiley face and be positive. But something in both of us, we're just positive."
Anita: "Your positivity helps me too, every time I see your videos. But also the first thing that came to my mind is that you're a survivor. You [also] went through something very difficult . . . and it gives me hope that there's an 'after cancer' for me. Every time I look at you, I'm like, he survived. He did it. So can I. There is going to be an after for me, too."

How has our friendship evolved over time?

Anita: "I wanted to reach out because you were a cancer survivor, and also your career was very interesting to me . . . but over time, you gave me positivity and encouragement through my treatment. You supported me through your online presence. But also, you showed up in person and you showed me that with our advocacy, we can make a difference in our community . . . when you showed up to the fundraiser I was doing, I felt like you were a person who was a part of my life - not just an online friend, but [someone who] supported me throughout my life and my journey."

How would you describe our relationship now?

Anita: "I would describe our friendship now as actual friends - not just online friends who met in person. We continue to follow each other online, and I know a piece of your life, a piece of your family, a piece of what you do in your life. It's like how I have some high school friends I still follow on Instagram, and we see [each other] maybe once in a blue moon, but we still pick up where we left off. I don't think it's regressing, it's progressing. And in the future, we'll have more chances to do things together when our health allows it."
Mark: "I love that I will always have your back, and you will always have my back. And I know that I can count on you . . . I count on you as a resource, but also as someone I can lean on if I'm having a bad day and vice versa. We're there for each other. It's been great, and I'm excited to continue to grow in friendship together."

Amaya and Michael

Image Source: Courtesy of Amaya Matos and Michael Cramer

How is a cancer app different from a support group?

Michael: "I feel like none of the connections I made on CancerBuddy were ever forced because we'd already gone through a similar thing and had a similar mindset because we've been through so much as a community."
Amaya: "Especially with both of us going through the GVHD stuff, it's really nice to be able to be like, OK, well, I'm not crazy and also not alone. I know I always message you like, 'Has this happened to you?'"

What made you want to start talking with me on the app?

Amaya: "You are the reason why I feel like my care is where it's at now. I think that had I never reached out to you about getting a second opinion and meeting with your doctor, I would have never done those things . . . [it's] almost like putting a battery in my back . . . you're so good at advocating for yourself and speaking up, whereas I would let [doctors] put me to the side. Even though I am stagnant right now in treatment, it's just because I don't have a lot of options. But I wouldn't be where I'm at right now if it wasn't for that - putting the battery in my back."
Michael: "That's sweet. I think it's the same thing [for me] - seeing someone my age with GVHD, locally too. When you see someone across the world, you still connect, but . . . the fact that we've met several times has been really cool. We bonded over the necrosis, even Fortnite."

Why do you think we make such good friends?

Amaya: "I can always reach out to you. Even if I were to look at our messages, you've always answered, and I hope you feel the same vice versa. You can always reach out to me . . . I feel like the after part is really hard because you're expected to be perfect and great because you survived it. But like, I'm sitting here, and my toes are stuck."
Michael: "I get the worst cramps every day. I totally get it."
Amaya: "It's just one of those things, being able to relate . . . and then the times we have spent together in person - it's not just surface level. I think it has meaning."

What role has our friendship played in your cancer journey?

Michael: "When people hear that your cancer is in remission, a lot of times people think you're all good, you're back to normal. But when you live with something like GVHD, it's a whole other disease, a whole other life you have to adapt to. And our friendship has played a huge role because we've been able to connect, to talk about it. I don't feel so alone going through it, you know? A lot of cancer survivors I talk to, I'm happy for them because they survive cancer, but they may not have GVHC, so they can't understand me on that level. But our connection - we understand each other because we've been through very similar things."

How has our friendship evolved over time?

Amaya: "The years go on and we're still dealing with this. It's unfortunate, but I think the bond is stronger because of it . . . even just seeing your videos of how much you're focusing on the gym and then sharing that you're getting your [personal training] certificate . . . you motivate me."
Michael: "Our relationship evolved from Instagram DMs to laughing on Fortnite, literally. And I think it's great that there's stuff we bond over that's not just GVHD. We're friends beyond the disease and beyond cancer and GVHD. Like, the Orlando Magic, Fortnite, even Lego and the gym."

How would you describe our relationship now?

Michael: "I go to the hospital and I see people who are getting ready for their stem cell transplant . . . and then I'm there getting my regular infusion . . . you feel like a poser because you're about to go home and go back to studying, and they're about to go get admitted."
Amaya: "Exactly that . . . I don't know if I've talked to anyone else that's had to deal with that. [It's] almost like we're living the same life, just in different bodies and places."
Michael: "Yeah, and one has the superior basketball team in their city."

Chandler Plante (she/her) is a social producer and staff writer for the Health & Fitness team at Popsugar. She has over five years of industry experience, previously working as an editorial assistant for People magazine, a social media manager for Millie magazine, and a contributor for Bustle Digital Group. She has a degree in magazine journalism from Syracuse University and is based in Los Angeles.

15 Rules of Sickness Etiquette, According to Popsugar Editors

Mirel Zaman — Mon, 04 May 2026 07:45:02 -0700

The pandemic changed everything, including social norms around how to behave when you're sick (or just afraid you might be sick). Some long-held courtesies still apply - sneeze into your elbow; don't show up to a birthday party when you're clearly contagious - but there are some new rules of conduct too. And people have opinions - strong ones - about proper sickness etiquette. To help you parse this updated landscape, we attempted to spell out what's considered polite or rude in regards to illness.

To come up with these points of decorum, we asked coworkers to weigh in on real-life scenarios. We couldn't address every possible situation you might encounter, but we attempted to give guidance for the most common experiences people have. We also ran the results of our mini-survey by PS Council member Andrea C. Love, PhD, who helped flag anything that clashed with the actual best practices of hygiene and safety.

Together, we were able to draw up 15 basic rules for modern-day sickness etiquette. Some of them may seem like common sense, while others might be considered more controversial. But that's to be expected - what etiquette guide doesn't inspire some passionate discourse?

Experts Featured in This Article

Andrea Love, PhD, is a biomedical scientist and award-winning science communicator with over a decade and a half of expertise in infectious diseases, cancer, and immunology.

Sickness Etiquette in Social Situations

When you're starting to feel sick: If you have plans to meet up with a friend and you're feeling a little under the weather, it's polite to let the friend know ASAP and let them decide if they're still down to see you - even if you're eager to keep your plans. If you begin feeling sick after spending time with a friend, text them to let them know. It's also a good idea to take an at-home COVID test so you can tell people you've recently seen whether or not they're at risk of COVID specifically.
When you're getting over an illness: If you're recovering from an illness, you should tell anyone you're planning to see that you've been sick (until you're totally symptom-free) - even if you feel confident you're no longer contagious.
When you sound sick: When you know you don't have a contagious illness but you sound sick (due to seasonal allergies, for instance), it's polite to explain to people you see in person that you're not at risk of getting them sick.
When you've been exposed to COVID: When someone you recently hung out with says they just tested positive for COVID, you should tell anyone you saw since then that you've been exposed (as well as anyone you were planning to see in the next few days). This is a good rule whether you have symptoms or not, and you should consider taking an at-home test even if you don't feel under the weather. The FDA recommends testing yourself five full days after being exposed to COVID. If you're negative, the CDC suggests re-testing 48 hours later to confirm. The FDA also suggests testing before visiting any high-risk individuals, just to be safe.
When you're trying to avoid getting sick: It's OK to ask friends if they feel at all under the weather before you see them, especially if you have a big event coming up that you can't miss, or a pre-existing health condition. (You don't have to explain why you're asking.) When your friend offers you a bite of their meal or a sip of their drink, it's also not rude to ask if they're sick before accepting. "There are other things besides respiratory illnesses that can be transmitted too," Dr. Love says.
When you're hosting an event: If you're hosting an event such as a wedding or kid's birthday party, it's fine to include a line on the invite that says something to the effect of "If you're feeling under the weather, please stay home."

Masking Etiquette

For explaining your mask: You never have to explain why you're wearing a mask - whether it's because you're immunocompromised, trying to avoid getting sick, or trying not to pass along germs to others. Should the topic come up, however, most people we spoke to said it's polite to explain. "We should try to start normalizing mask-wearing for whatever reason the person has," Dr. Love says. "[It's] very considerate."
For being in public while sick: If you get sick just before you're supposed to leave for vacation, it's not rude to go anyway - but you should take precautions such as masking if you're taking public transportation like a plane. In general, if you're sick - or think you might be getting sick - and you have to go out, you should wear a mask in public spaces, including public transportation. "Also worth noting: try to limit public exposures if you can avoid them. For example, if you have the ability to order delivery groceries instead of going to a store," Dr. Love adds. "Not always possible, of course."
For commenting on others' masks (or lack thereof): The people we spoke to agreed that you can offer a mask to someone else, but only if it's someone you know or someone who's said they're sick. If you're ever in doubt, mask up yourself instead. Likewise, you can tell people you know that they're masking incorrectly. When it comes to strangers, though, it's better (and probably safer) to just mask up yourself if you're concerned about their improper masking.

Workplace Sickness Etiquette

For sick days: Obviously, working while sick is not required. If you need rest, you should take it. "We live in a society where the 'hustle' culture is often to our detriment. Even if your illness is mild, your immune system fights best when you get good quality rest, hydration, and a balanced, nutrient-rich diet," Dr. Love says. So if you can take the day off, do.

Hand Sanitizer Etiquette

For using sanitizer in public: When you use your own personal bottle of hand sanitizer, it's polite - but not required - to offer the sanitizer to the people you're with. The people we spoke to also agreed that it's rude to use hand sanitizer immediately after shaking hands with someone. Wait until you're no longer with them, or sanitize discreetly.

Sickness Etiquette For Kids and Families

When your child is sick: When your child is sick, but you feel fine, it's considered polite to give people you have to see a heads up that you have a sick kid at home. But you don't have to behave as if you're sick too, unless you start experiencing symptoms. This is a tricky scenario - and a good compromise. "For any illness, the 'attack rate' isn't 100 percent even if you live with someone who's sick," Dr. Love says. "[Getting sick] isn't a guarantee, but the risk is higher."
When a parent is under the weather: When you're sick, but your child seems fine, it's polite to encourage them to be extra-diligent with hand washing, masking, and social distancing, and give people they'll be seeing socially a heads up that their parent is sick.
When someone else's kid is under the weather: If a fellow parent at your child's school or daycare admits to sending their child in when they're in violation in the facilities' sick day policies, it's not rude to alert the facility - but offering backup childcare solutions or asking more about why they feel they have to do so is also a nice thing to do. Notably, this is a rule in which the public's and Dr. Love's perspectives diverged. While the people who responded to this question in our mini survey noted you're not compelled to alert the facility, Dr. Love says, "I think the daycare should be notified." It's not about tattling, but "being aware of the public health impact of these decisions (see [last year's] measles outbreak in Philly)," she explains.

And One Last General Rule of Thumb:

It's never OK to lie about being sick or your symptoms.

- Additional reporting by Chandler Plante

Mirel Zaman (she/her) is the former health and fitness director at Popsugar. She has over 15 years of experience working in the health and wellness space, covering fitness, general health, mental health, relationships and sex, food and nutrition, spirituality, family and parenting, culture, and news.

What Is Lupus? An MD Breaks Down the Autoimmune Condition

Ginny Graves — Mon, 04 May 2026 07:45:02 -0700

This informational guide, part of Popsugar's Condition Center, lays out the realities of this health concern: what it is, what it can look like, and strategies that medical experts say are proven to help. You should always consult your doctor regarding matters pertaining to your health and before starting any course of medical treatment.

You may be more broadly familiar with lupus as celebrities have gotten more open and honest about their experience with the autoimmune condition in recent years. But what is lupus, exactly? And how do people get lupus? A simple way to explain it: lupus occurs when the immune system mistakes the body's own healthy tissue as a foreign invader and attacks it, causing widespread tissue damage and inflammation. "The body essentially becomes allergic to itself," says rheumatologist Daniel Wallace, MD.

The causes of lupus isn't certain either, but experts have a few theories as to why certain people are more impacted than other (more on that below). For example, 90 percent of people with lupus are women, mostly in their childbearing years, and the condition can be fatal in some instances, according to the Lupus Foundation of America. Ther are also a handful of other morbidities associated with the condition, like an increased risk of heart disease and pregnancy complications, so being aware of its symptoms and bringing them to the attention of a doctor is critical.

Ahead, experts break down everything you need to know about the condition, including what causes lupus, how lupus is diagnosed, lupus symptoms and risk factors, and treatment for lupus.

Experts Featured in This Article

Daniel Wallace, MD, is an LA-based rheumatologist and a member of the Lupus Research Alliance board of directors.

What Is Lupus?

Lupus falls is an autoimmune disease that "occurs when the body immune system attacks your own tissues and organs," per the Mayo Clinic. It involves a spectrum of symptoms and can affect several different organ systems, including the skin, heart, kidneys, joints, lungs, blood, and brain (in 50 percent of systemic lupus cases, there is major-organ involvement).

There are two main types of lupus: systemic and cutaneous. "Systemic lupus, the most common type, involves the organs, and people who have it are usually fairly easy for medical professionals to identify," Dr. Wallace says. "Cutaneous lupus causes achiness and rashy skin."

Symptoms of Lupus

Lupus symptoms can vary from person to person and day to day, ranging from mild to very severe. Some common symptoms of lupus include:

Extreme fatigue
A butterfly-shaped rash on the cheeks and nose
Headaches
Low-grade fever
Swelling or stiffness in the joints
Chest pain when you breathe deeply
Dry eyes
Skin lesions that can worsen with sun exposure
Fingers and toes that change color with cold temperature or stress

Fatigue is often the most debilitating factor, limiting ability to function mentally and physically. Most people with the illness don't suffer continuously, though. The disease often alternates between flares, or periods of disease activity, that can vary across a person's lifetime and with treatment. The flares can range from mild symptoms to downright debilitating.

What Causes Lupus?

No one knows the exact cause of the syndrome, but a combination of factors likely come into play, including genes, environment, and hormones, per the Mayo Clinic.

Lupus is about 25 percent genetic, according to twin studies, Dr. Wallace says. There are more than 50 genes associated with the condition.
Environmental factors such as excessive sun exposure, cigarette smoking, infections like Epstein-Barr virus, and exposure to silica dust in agricultural and industrial areas may all increase the risk.
Certain drugs, including penicillin and other commonly prescribed antibiotics, may trigger symptoms.
Stress and trauma may be associated with lupus risk. A 2017 study published in Arthritis & Rheumatology found that women who experienced post-traumatic stress disorder after incidents like serious car accidents or sexual assault were three times as likely to have lupus - and those who were exposed to trauma but didn't develop PTSD had more than double the risk of their non-traumatized peers.
Estrogen is somehow associated with lupus, doctors believe, given that the condition primarily affects women of childbearing age. Some people with the condition are more symptomatic before their periods or during pregnancy, when estrogen is high. "If you have lupus, you should talk to your doctor about whether it's safe to use hormonal birth controls or hormone therapy," Dr. Wallace says. Also, while people with lupus can have normal, safe pregnancies, they're considered "high-risk pregnancies" because of their condition.

Black people tend to be disproportionately affected by the condition: they are three times more likely to get lupus than white people, per the CDC. Latine, Asian, Native American, and Alaska Native people are also more commonly affected by lupus. This disparity may be due to several barriers, including language or communication, lack of access to care, inadequate or lack of healthcare coverage, and stress caused by racial discrimination, reports the American Journal of Epidemiology.

How Is Lupus Diagnosed?

Receiving a lupus diagnosis is no easy feat as symptoms vary from person to person and can change over time. "A lupus diagnosis can take up to six years from the time symptoms are first noticed. You might have to advocate for yourself to see a rheumatologist, who is better trained to identify the condition," Dr. Wallace tells PS. (This short quiz from The Lupus Foundation of America can help you discern whether you should ask your doctor for a referral to a specialist.)

In order to diagnose lupus, experts will use a combination of blood and urine tests, symptom analysis, and physical examination, as there is no one test for the condition. They may also rely on imaging or a biopsy, if the condition is suspected to have impacted your lungs, heart, or kidneys.

How Is Lupus Treated?

Early diagnosis and avoiding triggers for the disease, like excessive sun exposure, can help people with lupus manage their symptoms. There are a range of medications that are used to treat it, from antimalarial medications like hydroxychloroquine to steroids and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories. Patients with organ-threatening disease might require chemotherapy or other specialized treatments, Dr. Wallace adds.

Lupus is often categorized as an "invisible illness," and experts emphasize that it's important to advocate for SLE testing or for an appointment with a rheumatologist when you aren't finding answers to "invisible" symptoms such as recurrent joint pain, fever, and severe fatigue. "Educate yourself about the disease - lupus advocacy organizations have high-quality information - and call your doctor when you get a fever or swollen joints," Dr. Wallace says.

Talk to your doctor about diet and exercise, too. Both can help you feel better and function better, but you need to make sure you're making the best choices for you and your particular condition. "If you're on steroids, for instance, you want to limit carbs and cholesterol," Dr. Wallace says. "The best exercise includes range of motion, like Pilates, tai chi, and yoga. Anxiety and stress reduction is vital, too."

- Additional reporting by Alexis Jones

Ginny Graves is an award-winning writer in the San Francisco Bay Area whose work focuses on science, psychology, health, nature, and the human-animal bond. In addition to PS, her features have appeared in Time, Vogue, Runner's World, Men's Health, O The Oprah Magazine, Elle, Prevention, Scientific American, and National Geographic Adventure.

What to Eat When You Have Lupus, According to Experts

Lauren Manaker — Mon, 04 May 2026 07:40:03 -0700

Lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease caused by the body's immune system attacking its own tissues and organs. This can cause inflammation in various parts of the body, including the joints, skin, kidneys, blood cells, brain, heart, and lungs. And while living with lupus requires management of symptoms and understanding of the condition, it's also important to note there isn't a one-size-fits-all "lupus diet."

Some people, however, find that certain foods can impact their symptoms either positively or negatively. Identifying and incorporating foods that can help manage your symptoms, along with those to avoid, can be a beneficial part of your overall lupus management strategy.

Ahead, Popsugar spoke to dietitians and a rheumatologist about creating a lupus diet that is most beneficial for symptom management, as well as what foods to eat with lupus and what foods to avoid.

Experts Featured in This Article

Micaela Bayard, MD, is a rheumatologist at Mount Sinai and the associate professor of medicine at The Icahn School of Medicine.

Mascha Davis, MPH, RD, is a registered dietitian, nutritionist, and author of "Eat Your Vitamins".

How Does Your Diet Impact Lupus?

Like many conditions, dietary choices may impact symptoms associated with lupus, with some caveats to keep in mind. "Lupus is an autoimmune condition, so it can't be cured by just changing your diet," Chrissy Arsenault, registered dietitian at Trainer Academy, told PS. "However, consuming a nutrient-dense diet is an essential part of a holistic approach to treatment."

"Periods of increased lupus disease activity or lupus flares are a result of inflammation," adds rheumatologist Micaela Bayard, MD. Because of this, Dr. Bayard says anything that leads to decreased inflammation may prevent or limit flare symptoms - including eating or avoiding certain foods.

Consulting with a healthcare provider or a dietitian can help in tailoring a dietary plan that suits an individual's specific needs and conditions.

Food to Avoid With Lupus

People living with lupus should consider avoiding certain types of foods that may exacerbate their symptoms or trigger flare-ups. While trigger foods can vary from person to person, there are some general foods and beverages our experts recommend limiting when you have lupus, including:

Alcohol: It may potentially trigger flares due to its immunosuppressive properties, exacerbating symptoms and increasing the risk of kidney involvement, a common lupus complication.
Alfalfa sprouts: While beloved by many, these microgreens "contain an amino acid called L-canavanine that may stimulate the immune system, potentially leading to flare-ups in individuals with lupus," Dr. Bayard explains. Because of this, this food may be best left off of the dishes of those with lupus.
Foods high in salt: These foods may elevate blood pressure and stress the kidneys, an organ that lupus may affect. Pickles, ultra-processed meats (like bacon and sausage), and many canned soups are just a few items that are typically high in sodium.
Sugary beverages, ultra-processed snacks, and fried foods: Foods that fall into this category (like regular soda, fried chicken wings, and fried potato chips) can also negatively affect those with lupus as they're considered pro-inflammatory foods. "Some research indicates that reducing added sugars may alleviate lupus symptoms, but there is not yet enough evidence to conclude that sugar directly causes lupus symptoms," says dietitian Mascha Davis, MPH, RD.

Food to Eat With Lupus

For those managing a lupus diagnosis, a balanced and nutritious diet can play a crucial role in maintaining overall health and managing symptoms. "Overall, there is no one best lupus diet, and the best balance of food and supplements is specific to the needs of each individual living with lupus depending on their most active symptoms," Dr. Bayard tells PS. That said, there are also some foods experts believe can be particularly useful for those who have lupus, including:

The Mediterranean diet: This eating plan is thought to have a positive impact on lupus health, per Dr. Bayard. One study published in Rheumatology showed that, among people with lupus, greater adherence to the Mediterranean diet was linked to better heart health and lower disease activity vs. those who did not follow this dietary pattern. The researchers suggest that one reason why these positive effects were observed is because of the anti-inflammatory nature of this diet. The Mediterranean diet emphasizes consuming the following foods: plant-based foods, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and nuts, alongside olive oil as a major source of healthy fat. It also includes moderate amounts of fish and poultry, with a reduced intake of red meat and dairy products, promoting heart health and supporting weight management.
Foods that provide calcium: Food sources high in calcium (like leafy greens, milk, and tofu) can be beneficial for bone and joint health in lupus, Dr. Bayard says.
Fish and nuts: Both are rich in omega-3s which can be beneficial for heart health in lupus, Dr. Bayard tells PS.
Dark-colored produce: Cherries, beets, and leafy greens, and other dark-colored produce are rich in antioxidants and should therefore be a part of a lupus-friendly diet, Davis shares. Antioxidants can combat oxidative stress, which may thereby reduce inflammation and potentially reduce flare-ups among some people with lupus.
Vitamin D foods: People with lupus tend to have low levels of vitamin D due to a combination of lupus disease activity, corticosteroid use, and avoiding sunlight. Vitamin D impacts bone health, and lower levels of it are linked to negative bone health outcomes. Fatty fish, eggs (with the yolk), fortified milk and dairy alternatives can help fuel the body with vitamin D.

Outside of food, Dr. Bayard also considers supplements as a potentially beneficial component of the "lupus diet". As more research becomes available, "we may find more about the benefits of many of the supplements that have been suggested to have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects: curcumin, turmeric, selenium, Vitamin C, and Vitamin E," Dr. Bayard says.

That said, all of our experts agree that every body is different and when it comes to eating a "lupus diet," there is no one plan. For this reason, consulting with your healthcare provider can help you navigate your diet in the safest and most beneficial way.

Lauren Manaker is an award-winning registered dietitian and freelance writer who is passionate about providing evidence-based nutrition information in a fun and interesting way.

Doctors Told Me Anxiety Was Making Me Sick, Then I Was Diagnosed With Lupus

Caitlin Flynn — Mon, 04 May 2026 07:40:03 -0700

"I'm not leaving this office until you run an ANA test and give me a satisfactory explanation for why I'm not really sick," I told my doctor, wiping away tears of frustration and distress. It was late 2017, and, after years of desperately trying to get a diagnosis for the increasingly debilitating symptoms of what we now know is lupus, I was at my wit's end. I couldn't take it anymore - and by "it," I'm referring to both the untreated illness and the parade of doctors who had dismissed my symptoms.

It had been five years since I'd experienced my first symptom of the autoimmune disease: extreme fatigue. I was in my early 20s, and, like pretty much everyone else, I was familiar with feeling exhausted after pulling an all-nighter before an exam or staying out too late on a work night. But this was completely different - no matter how much I slept, I woke up feeling unrefreshed, and if I didn't set an alarm on the weekends, I could easily sleep for 12 hours straight.

A few months later, I began experiencing unexplained joint pain and spiking high fevers despite not having the flu or a virus. I made an appointment with my primary care doctor in the hopes that she'd be able to shed some light on what might be causing these symptoms. She ran the most basic blood test possible and, when it came back normal, concluded that I was just stressed out and my physical problems were related to my anxiety disorder. At the time, I didn't know that lupus, like many other autoimmune illnesses, requires a slew of lab tests in order to be detected.

I was perplexed by my doctor's conclusion. Although I agreed that anxiety could be the cause of my fatigue, it seemed unlikely that it was the reason my fever spiked to 103 on a regular basis. But I figured she knew best, so I didn't push the matter. When my symptoms intensified several months later, I decided to get a second opinion and scheduled an appointment with a different doctor - but the outcome was the same. Both doctors had excellent credentials, so I began to wonder if the problem was me. They'd both referenced my history of anxiety and depression when they concluded I wasn't physically ill, so I became fearful that I was "crazy" and I'd either brought the symptoms on myself or wasn't mentally well enough to understand them.

I got sicker, but I felt ashamed after two doctors had told me that nothing was wrong. I always thought doctors were on my side and would want to help a patient who was experiencing a great deal of physical pain. So even as my symptoms got worse, I didn't go back to a doctor for a full year. I couldn't bear the thought of another medical professional telling me the pain was all in my head. Then, the illness became so severe that I struggled to function. Getting out of bed in the morning required a Herculean effort, and my body was so weak that I felt exhausted after performing the smallest tasks. I lost weight, and my concerned boss frequently sent me home from work early because it was clear to her and my coworkers that something was very wrong.

It had been two years since I'd first exhibited symptoms of lupus when my mother was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, which is also an autoimmune illness. Because autoimmune diseases run in families, I went to another doctor and shared this information. By this time, my mom and I had already begun researching my symptoms in an effort to figure out what was causing them - doctors weren't willing to do the task, so someone had to.

No, I didn't plan to diagnose myself based on what WebMD told me, but I hoped that if I arrived at my next appointment armed with some knowledge, the doctor would be more likely to take me seriously. Because the symptoms of lupus mimic those of other illnesses, including fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, I still wasn't sure what illness I had, but I did know I was sick and I needed treatment in order to remain a functional human being.

I went to a fourth doctor, who once again blamed stress and anxiety for my fatigue, body pain, and headaches. I brought up the fevers, and she responded that I probably have a weak immune system and catch more colds and viruses than I realize. At this point, it was incredibly difficult to stay calm, but I knew that if I flew off the handle, I would only give the doctor more reason to chalk up my symptoms to a mental illness.

Shortly after that appointment, I moved from New York City to Seattle and found a new primary care doctor. We went over my medical history, but she was unconcerned by my symptoms. Then I visited my best friend in Austin to celebrate her birthday. I've always been sensitive to the sun and extreme temperatures, but this time was different thanks to the photosensitivity caused by lupus. I developed a butterfly rash on my face - although it's considered a telltale sign of lupus, not everyone with the illness gets it, and this was my first time.

When I got home, I went back to the doctor and showed her photos I'd taken of myself after developing the rash. I was now fairly confident that lupus had been causing my symptoms all along, and I reasoned that seeing is believing. And this time, I wasn't backing down.

I had done more research, and I knew an anti-nuclear antibody (ANA) test is the most sensitive diagnostic test for confirming the illness. "It's possible to get a false positive on an ANA test," the doctor told me. I was aware of that, but it was irresponsible and straight-up lazy to not even run the test and explore the possibility that I have lupus. She continued to push back, telling me that if the test came back negative, I would be upset. That's when I told her I wasn't leaving her office until she took my illness seriously. When it came back positive, I asked to be referred to an autoimmune specialist.

The specialist ran more tests, and, five years after its onset, I was finally diagnosed with lupus. I was put on two medications for the illness, and, at my new doctor's recommendation, I also began acupuncture and medical massages. Although I still struggle with flare-ups and go through rough patches, my treatment regimen has helped enormously, and it has changed my life. I no longer sleep through weekends, and I'm able to travel, hike, and work out again.

It may sound as though I had bad luck, but unfortunately, my case is ordinary; it takes an average of nearly six years for people to be diagnosed with lupus. To be clear, I understand that lupus isn't a simple illness to diagnose, but what's completely unacceptable to me is that my doctors didn't even try to figure out why I was having such intense physical symptoms. Instead, they took the easy way out and used my anxiety disorder against me. The bottom line is that we know our bodies better than anyone else - and, at the end of the day, we're the ones who have to live every single day with the illness. Whether you have lupus or another tough-to-diagnose illness, trust your instincts, and if your current doctor won't take your symptoms seriously, find one who will.

Caitlin Flynn is a journalist, editor, and content strategist covering culture, social justice, human rights, and health.

Why Women in Pain Are Still Begging Doctors to Listen

Alisa Hrustic — Mon, 04 May 2026 07:40:00 -0700

Abigail Libers experienced her first string of daily headaches when she was just 12 years old. As her pain intensified, her mom booked appointments with a doctor, a chiropractor, and an acupuncturist. "We talked to so many people trying to figure out what was wrong with me," Libers recalls. "None of them said the word migraine."

Libers, a freelance journalist, vividly remembers one of her first consultations with an older male doctor. "I told him I had a headache every day. He was like, 'Every day? That's not possible.' I felt like he thought I wasn't telling the truth." Frustrated by the lack of answers, she started acting like the headaches weren't happening, a tactic she relied on throughout high school, college, and her early 20s. "I was in denial for a long time," she says. "I pushed through a tremendous amount of pain, and no one knew."

Libers is among the nearly 25 percent of women in the US who live with chronic pain. Today, she no longer hides her migraine attacks, which she likens to a knife being screwed into her head. After seeing a slew of specialists over many years, she now has an arsenal of tools to treat her chronic migraine, an often debilitating neurological condition, but still deals with pain daily. "It's just a question of how bad it is," she says.

Pain is tough to diagnose and treat because no two people experience it the same way. "It's not like your blood pressure or your heart rate. There is no objective way to measure pain," explains professor of orthopedic surgery Kimberly Templeton, MD.

Yet women carry a heavy and unique burden. Women's pain is frequently misdiagnosed, brushed off, or ignored by healthcare providers. Studies show women are more likely to experience chronic pain conditions like fibromyalgia and migraine - and perceive pain more intensely - than men. There's a host of excruciating health conditions that only affect the reproductive systems of people assigned female at birth, like endometriosis and uterine fibroids, which are easily missed or undertreated. We also know that women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression and anxiety - feelings that are often seen as emotional overreactions versus chronic conditions that can increase pain sensitivity.

And that's all just the tip of the (very sharp) iceberg. Here's why our healthcare system continues to fail women in pain, how experts are trying to shrink the pain gap, and how to advocate for yourself if you're not getting the help you need.

Experts Featured in This Article:

Kimberly Templeton, MD, is a professor of orthopedic surgery and sports medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center, as well as the past president of the American Medical Women's Association.

Akiko Okifuji, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in pain management and a member of the treatment team at the University of Utah Pain Management Center.

Janiece L. Taylor, PhD, is a Johns Hopkins School of Nursing assistant professor who researches pain disparities in older women of color and people aging with disabilities.

Fadel Zeidan, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Anesthesiology in the Center of Pain Medicine and the director of the Pain Health and Mindfulness Laboratory at UC San Diego.

A Healthcare System Built on Biases

Pain isn't just a literal zap! to your body tissues. It's a biopsychosocial phenomenon, says pain researcher Akiko Okifuji, PhD. It's influenced by biological traits, like your family's health history or past injuries; your psychological state, or emotional and mental well-being; and social factors including things like cultural norms and whether or not you have affordable health insurance. All of these things can be pieces in your pain puzzle.

"We're expected to take care of everyone else before we take care of ourselves."

And this is where the pain gap starts to widen: Many women have been conditioned to feel like they're pestering their doctor with too many questions or overstating how much they're hurting. Women are told it's "normal" to live with pain because they experience it monthly. From a young age, girls are socialized to be nice, nurturing, and selfless. "We're expected to take care of everyone else before we take care of ourselves," Dr. Templeton says. Women may try to tamp down their bodies' warning signals - even if they're flashing red - leading to devastating delays in care.

Photographer Eva Woolridge will never forget rushing to urgent care in 2018 after about three weeks of on-and-off abdominal pain. She initially tried to brush it off, not wanting to "dramatize" her symptoms, but the "internal stabbing" got so bad, so suddenly, that she toppled over and started projectile vomiting. Her white female doctor cracked jokes during the appointment and brushed it off as food poisoning.

Stunned by the interaction, Woolridge headed to the ER, where she waited 40 minutes to be seen, despite her severe pain. "I felt so helpless," says Woolridge, who channeled her experience into an award-winning photography project. "I was in such disbelief at how the system was failing me. They weren't listening to me." Meanwhile, a grapefruit-sized dermoid cyst was blocking the blood supply to one of her ovaries.

Black Women Face Even Harsher Realities

As a Black woman, Woolridge remembers thinking, "It's happening to me. I'm a statistic." Unfortunately, her experience is in fact all too common and distressing, especially for women of color. Pain doesn't discriminate, but unfortunately, people do, points out Janiece L. Taylor, PhD, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing who researches pain disparities in older women of color and people aging with disabilities. "Expectations and beliefs surrounding Black women can really influence how their pain is assessed and treated," she says.

The US healthcare system has a sordid history of medical racism, and blatantly false beliefs about Black people's bodies persist. A 2016 study found that a whopping 40 percent of first- and second-year medical students believed Black people have "thicker skin" than white people; trainees who believed Black people were less sensitive to pain were also less likely to prescribe effective treatments. Research has also shown that Black patients who land in the ER are 40 percent less likely to receive pain relievers than white patients.

When Woolridge's doctors told her they needed to remove her affected ovary, her dad sprung into action, asking question after question to ensure the procedure was necessary. Historically, when women (especially women of color) complained of reproductive issues like pelvic pain, doctors often performed major procedures, such as removing entire organs, Dr. Okifuji notes. In Woolridge's case, the procedure was warranted, but she was grateful to have a parent with knowledge of racial bias in the healthcare system as her advocate.

Race is one of the most glaring social determinants of health in the pain gap conversation, but scientists are digging into other factors too. Your level of education, how much money you make, access to healthcare and nutritious food, and the safety of your immediate environment can also tip the pain scales.

The Pain Gap Is Rooted in a Data Gap

Every expert Popsugar spoke with agreed that the gold standard for pain treatment is personalized care that adopts a multidisciplinary approach. For example, a woman with rheumatoid arthritis would ideally see a rheumatologist, a physical therapist, an orthopedic surgeon, and a mental health professional. "In our own disciplines, we have biases based on our focus and how we were trained as clinicians," Dr. Taylor explains. "That's why working with other disciplines is so important. We can check each other to develop the best plan with the patient."

But there are "fundamental questions" to answer and "significant knowledge gaps" to fill before we reach that level of personalized care for women, per a recent congressionally mandated report. Experts lack clear and consistent guidelines that would allow them to effectively diagnose, treat, and prevent many women's health issues, especially reproductive health conditions. Yet only about 9 percent of the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) grant spending focused on women's health research between 2013 and 2023. Critical departments like the Office of Research on Women's Health remain underfunded.

"Most studies that look at ways to try to improve pain do not consistently disaggregate data based on either sex or gender," Dr. Templeton explains. (Remember: Sex is based on biological characteristics and gender is a social construct.) "Unless we actually look at the patients who are involved in those studies, to see what the differences are between how women respond and how men respond, we're not going to make a lot of progress." Layering in social determinants of health is extremely important, she adds, but it will take a massive educational effort to power studies that are large enough to look at all of the significant variables and how they influence pain.

One example of why a sex-specific approach just might be a game-changer: A study published in 2024 suggests that opioids - some of our most powerful pain medications - can be less effective for women because of how women's bodies process pain. Researchers found that while men clearly rely on the body's natural opiate system (certain neurotransmitters that bind to receptors in the nervous system) to reduce pain, women seem to rely on a different body system for similar relief. It's one that scientists have yet to pinpoint, says study author Fadel Zeidan, PhD. "Once we discover that, then we could use therapies that we know target said system, and possibly optimize pain relief in a sex-dependent fashion."

But we're not quite there yet: "The biggest hurdle right now is funding," he adds. "It's expensive to do this work. It really takes a village to make it happen." (Including a woman's voice. Dr. Zeidan notes that this study, which he calls one of the biggest discoveries in his lab, was kicked off, in part, because an undergraduate female student - Mikaila Reyes, an author on the paper - wanted to look for potential sex differences in this natural opiate system.)

While women have been included in clinical trials in recent years, the science is slow-going, Dr. Okifuji notes. After all, researchers are building on a decades-long foundation of studies largely conducted in men or mice. It's promising that certain biological factors could help illuminate why women uniquely experience pain - from hormonal fluctuations to neurological differences - but scientists aren't always looking for or analyzing these disparities in the data, even when they do include women in their research. "If you don't look, you don't find," Dr. Templeton says. "You can't have personalized medicine until you have the data to show what those differences are."

Advocacy Can Fuel Hope - And Change

Where do we go from here? Dr. Templeton says pain researchers are focusing on building awareness around sex and gender differences at the source, baking it into the curricula taught to medical students. They're also working with academic institutions and medical journal leadership who influence proposals and guidelines for publishing studies.

For example, the NIH funded a 2023 symposium where editors and leaders from top orthopedic journals came together to discuss how to "fix" the lack of sex-specific data in medical research. "We published an editorial as a call to action for journals to find a way, from a publishing perspective, to address this," Dr. Templeton says.

The hope? "If journals take a stand on this, which several of them have, and set the bar that they will be looking for [sex-specific data], then the researchers will follow suit, ideally designing their studies to include the validity of the data for both women and men."

There's also a renewed spotlight on federal funding: The above report calls on Congress to catalyze serious change, with a recommendation to pump $15 billion into women's health research over the next five years. This would nearly double the average NIH annual investment.

Dr. Templeton notes that while people with certain conditions will never be 100 percent pain-free, doctors should still do everything possible to improve the quality of life for these patients. Unfortunately, that often means that women in pain are left to fight for the care they need and deserve.

Until We See Sweeping Change, Don't Hesitate to Speak Up

Remember, you know your body best. If something feels seriously off with your health but you're being brushed off by a doctor, keep the below tips in mind.

Push for a second (or third) opinion.

For Libers, finding the right neurologist - someone she felt genuinely safe with - made all the difference. "If you're uncomfortable with your doctor, you're not going to say what you need to say in your appointments - and that's a waste of your time and their time," she says.

That said, a lot of people (understandably) have a hard time navigating our complex healthcare system. If you're feeling overwhelmed, ask your current provider for a social worker to help you, says Dr. Taylor, who adds that you don't have to explain why. A social worker can help you parse through insurance requirements, connect you to financial aid and educational resources, and generally help advocate for your needs.

Interview your doctor.

Ask them about how they work, what they think your treatment plan should be, and whether or not they have personal experience with your condition. Pay attention to how they make you feel, Libers suggests. Are they rushing? Do they ask thoughtful questions about your symptoms? If you leave your appointment feeling disheartened, don't ignore the gut instinct to keep looking.

Connect with others.

At the height of the pandemic, Libers joined a support group for people with migraines, where members simply validate each other's pain, exchange treatment tips, and just vent with "people who get it." She says the experience has been crucial in her journey to finding relief.

Lean on someone you trust.

"Never downscale the pain you're feeling," Woolridge says. If possible, bring a trusted friend, family member, or partner with you. "You might be so overwhelmed by the actual pain that you need someone who can process the information doctors are telling you, challenge why certain actions are necessary, and be a witness to what they're saying," she explains.

Be an active participant in your care.

Tell your doctor when something doesn't work, Dr. Taylor says. For example, if they refer you to a physical therapist who's located somewhere you can't easily get to, that's a barrier worth bringing up. Or, if you tried a prescription medication and experienced a ton of side effects, be sure to mention that during your next appointment.

"Sometimes it feels like we're meant to be passive in the healthcare system," Dr. Taylor says. "But as patients, we definitely have a right to ask about the plan of care. Being a shared decision partner in that is so important."

Alisa Hrustic is a health, science, and lifestyle writer and editor with eight years of experience in digital media and service journalism. She's passionate about creating trustworthy wellness content that's rooted in science, inclusivity, and empathy. Most recently, she was the executive editor and health director at Self. She was previously the deputy editor at Prevention.com. Her work has also appeared in Men's Health and Women's Health.

I Sat in a Sauna Every Day For a Month - and Honestly, I'm Happier For It

Hayley Folk — Fri, 01 May 2026 12:30:02 -0700

A few years ago, a classmate in a nonfiction creative writing course I took in college turned in an essay that I've never quite forgotten: a 25-page piece all about her Finnish origin and her family's practice of daily saunaing.

Until her piece was passed out for peer review, I assumed most people's sauna routines mimicked mine; that is, they hit the sauna roughly once per year, during a visit to a trendy spa or bathhouse for a rare self-care day or for a friend's birthday or bridal shower.

I was wrong. As I learned from my classmate's piece, in Finnish culture, sauna-ing is not just a thing you do, but rather, a way of life. Finns literally invented the sauna, at least 2,000 years ago, and it's truly at the core of their culture. As my classmate put it, sauna-ing is a practice of meditation, love, family, honoring your body and, of course, taking care of your own health and well-being.

Oh, and one more thing that stuck with me from my classmate's essay: you may be pronouncing sauna - the only Finnish word you can find in the English dictionary, meaning "bath" or "bathhouse" - incorrectly. (I was!) It's pronounced SOW - rhymes with wow! - NAH, not SAW-NAH. And according to this classmate, who surely couldn't have imagined how often I'd think of their essay, saying SAW-NAH vs. SOW-NAH would be enough to get yourself uninvited to her family sauna.

Finally, after thinking about that 25-page essay and what it had taught me about the practice of sauna-ing for a few years, I decided to give it a real go. Sure, I could have visited a spa like Bathhouse more often, but some light online research led me to another option. I discovered that some people opt for installing an at-home sauna, too.

This may sound extreme for someone who, until that point, had only spent about five minutes in a sauna once a year. The truth is, it was extreme. But I couldn't stop wondering what my day-to-day would look like if I took sauna-ing as seriously as my morning coffee. Would my body and mind feel much lighter? How would other areas of my life change if I accepted the sauna as a way of life?

So, I did it. I installed an at-home sauna and sat in it every day for one month straight. Here's what happened.

Week One

In case you're unfamiliar, the practice of sauna-ing involves sitting in a heated, wooden room. Saunas can be dry, meaning they use hot stones or an electric heater to raise the room temp, or wet, meaning they use some sort of steam generator to create humidity as well as heat. My sauna was dry and the thermostat hovered around 150 to 175 degrees Fahrenheit.

While some people really don't like the heat of saunas, as someone who opts for hot yoga over "regular" classes every time, I wasn't too intimidated; I expected that my first few days of saunaing would remind me of stepping into my yoga studio after taking a few weeks off.

My inaugural visit to the sauna was a little more difficult than I expected, though. Stepping in, I felt immediately too hot and slightly winded. I sat on the wood stark nude - a nod to Finnish tradition. I managed to make it a whole five minutes before feeling overheated enough that I had to step outside.

While showering off, the afterglow set in. I felt tingly and refreshed, and that feeling stuck with me all day - then, as my experiment continued, all week. I started to look forward to my sauna session each morning, since it was such a reliable pick-me-up.

Week Two

When week two arrived, I was mostly excited to see if I could extend my sauna sessions past five minutes. While one small, older study published in the Medical Journal of Austria found that just three minutes of sauna-ing can improve cold symptoms, a review by RMIT University of 40 studies notes that Finnish sauna sessions mostly last from five to 20 minutes - much longer can put you at risk of issues like dehydration or blood pressure fluctuations, according to Harvard Health Publishing.

With that goal in mind, I brought a big jug of water into the sauna with me, laid out a towel beneath me, and tried to settle in for the (relatively) long haul. Each day, I tried to add on a little more time, and by the end of the second week, I was good to sit for 15 minutes fully, which felt really good on the chillier mornings.

Did I notice any big differences, though? I still felt tingly after my sauna sessions, but I'd say the biggest thing I noticed was a change in my skin texture. When I showered after, I could tell my skin was plumper and soaked up my skin-care regimen differently than when I didn't sauna. As a skin-care junkie, this was an unexpected but happily welcome side effect.

Week Three

They say it takes a person an average of 66 days to truly form a habit. But stepping into the sauna on week three, at day 15, I felt like sauna-ing could quickly become a daily ritual of mine.

This week, my goal was to stay in for 20 minutes and use this time to center myself. As someone who has suffered from anxiety and depression, I typically journal or use a meditation app for ten minutes at the start of my day, so I thought, "Why not meditate in the sauna?"

Now, in addition to the water jug and towel, I brought with me a waterproof speaker so I could play my morning meditation guide. The combination of heat and mindfulness was really nice. Every day, I noticed that it felt good for me to have a space meant solely for my own relaxation and grounding. Instead of being distracted by the noise of my upstairs neighbor or my computer calling to me, I was able to tell myself, "This is sauna time, nothing else."

Week Four

By day 22, I was really loving the daily sauna life. Every morning, I grabbed my water, towel, speaker, and of course, I had my birthday suit on just for the occasion and sat in the sauna by myself.

It was during week four that my classmate's sauna piece popped into my head yet again. I remembered how she said that for her, sauna-ing wasn't just about sweating, but about being with herself. I'd say that's how I felt this entire week. I already love alone time, but the sauna now felt like my very own sanctuary to enjoy just that.

By this time, I also felt like the actual benefits touted about sauna-ing - relaxed muscles, stress management, improved sleep - started to kick in, too. I'm super tense, especially around the shoulders and neck, but I found that I felt a little less tight in general. Plus, according to my OURA ring, my sleep score and resting heart rate had improved in comparison to my previous month.

What Did I Learn From My Daily Sauna Routine?

So, what did I learn? Did it actually change my day-to-day? Could I follow along with the Finnish and adopt it as a ritual? After doing it every day for a whole month, I absolutely think so.

While sometimes it's easy to say something has benefits and you should do it, we know that's not always the case, especially when it comes to health kicks. But with the sauna - a 2,000-year-old invention - I had high hopes. And while different bodies will respond differently to lifestyle changes, I'm happy to say that I did enjoy some noticeable benefits: better sleep, improved mental health, less muscle tension. I can't speak to some of the other benefits, like improved heart health, but I was happy with what I experienced.

For me, though, the biggest takeaway I had from my month-long sauna experience was this: it gave me a mental health routine I actually looked forward to. I was able to have a space that came to feel sacred, soft, and heart-opening. Even when I woke up not feeling my best, I could go to the sauna and reflect. I found that my classmate was right about what she had said: Sauna is not just about sweating out toxins or sitting naked in a wood box. It's about giving yourself the space and time to be with yourself.

Would I recommend sauna? Yes. While I won't go so far as to say that everyone has to literally build a sauna in their house like I did, I think anyone could get at least some benefit from adding a regular sauna session into their routine, if they're able to. Would I consider it a new life hack? Honestly, it just might be. Do I refer to it as SOW-NAH vs. SAW-NAH now? You better believe it.

Hayley Folk (she/her) is a freelance writer, editor, and podcast host based in New York City. She is the host of the "Naked Folk" podcast - a sexual wellness and relationships podcast - and she writes for major publications about the LGBTQ+ community, travel, lifestyle, sex, and wellness. In 2022, she received her master of fine arts in creative writing from The New School.