The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a report on Thursday, May 1, aiming to discredit gender-affirming-care and instead encouraging transgender and nonbinary individuals to try “exploratory therapy”—or psychotherapy—and stating that mental health care alone is a way to treat gender dysphoria in children. “There is a dearth of research on psychotherapeutic approaches to managing gender dysphoria in children and adolescents. This is due in part to the mischaracterization of such approaches as ‘conversion therapy,’ the report said. “Psychotherapy is a noninvasive alternative to endocrine and surgical interventions for the treatment of pediatric gender dysphoria.” Advertisement Though the report argues that this “exploratory therapy” is not the same as the long practice of “conversion therapy”—which is a practice of attempting to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity—advocates see little difference. “This report not only rejects health care best practices for transgender people, it goes a step further by recommending conversion therapy, though under a new, rebranded name, ‘exploratory therapy,’” said Casey Pick, director of law and policy at the LGBTQ+ advocacy group the Trevor Project, in an emailed statement. “Despite the report’s claims, this is, in fact, the same harmful practice of conversion therapy, just using friendlier language. We urge this Administration to respect and support people for who they are—and to let families and doctors make decisions based on what keeps people healthy, not government ideology.” Read More: Is Conversion Therapy the New Frontier for Anti-LGBTQ+ Groups? The report arrives following a Trump Executive Order, titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” which threatens to cut federal funding to hospitals and medical providers that provide gender-affirming-care to people ages 19 or younger. The Executive Order directed HHS to release a report on the existing literature for treatment for children with gender dysphoria in 90 days, which fell on April 28.

For thousands of years, people have waited on karma to catch up with their good behavior—or promised it would roll around for anyone who crossed them. The lure of karmic thinking is that if you do good things, positive outcomes will rain down on you, while the opposite is true for those who don’t uphold the same standard of morals. In other words: You reap what you sow. “It’s a fairly common belief—at least the general idea that there’s a bigger force outside of human beings, like a cosmic force that ensures that in the long run, good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people,” says Cindel White, an assistant professor of social and personality psychology at York University in Toronto who has long studied karma. Despite the fact that so many people subscribe to this supernatural belief system, researchers still don’t know a lot about it, including “how that belief looks in their daily life, how they feel about it, and how they think about it,” she says. Advertisement That’s why, in a study published May 1 in the journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, White and her colleagues investigated how people’s psychological motivations drive their beliefs about karma. They found a rather self-serving distinction in exactly how those views play out: Across populations, when people think about their own karma, it tends to be quite positive. But when they consider how karma affects others? Well, let’s just say there are a lot of people who had it coming. The enduring draw of karma The concept of karma is rooted in the worldview of many Asian religious traditions, like Hinduism and Buddhism, but it’s also become prevalent in other places, including nonreligious communities. In the last couple years, it’s saturated pop-culture: Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan, and JoJo Siwa, among other artists, all released karma-themed songs. In Swift’s tune, she compares good karma to everything from her boyfriend to a cat purring in her lap because it loves her. “Karma's a relaxing thought,” she croons. “Aren't you envious that for you it's not?”

It’s hard to think of four words more smug—and infuriating—than “I told you so.” “It feels like you’re delighting in the other person's misfortune,” says Jordan Conrad, founder and clinical director at Madison Park Psychotherapy in New York. “It feels equivalent to saying 'I would never be in your position because I'm smarter than you,' or 'If you only just let me run your life for you, you would be better off.’ Those are pretty unpleasant messages to send.” Advertisement Yet sometimes, it’s helpful to drive home the idea that a little foresight could have predicted the outcome—albeit in a kinder, more effective way. First, though, consider your relationship with the person and what you're trying to get out of the interaction, Conrad advises: Is it just to boost your own ego and knock them down a notch? Or do you genuinely believe it’s a learning opportunity that could make them happier and more successful in the future? If you work alongside someone who could benefit from reflecting on their decision-making, for example, you might be doing them a favor by having a kind conversation. The same goes for teens—but only if they’re receptive to it, he cautions. We asked experts for their favorite alternatives to telling someone you told them so. “I was worried it might turn out this way. I’m sorry that it did.” This framing makes it clear that the situation could have gone another way—while allowing the other person to save face. “It names your concern, while empathizing with them about the outcome,” says Dana Caspersen, a conflict engagement specialist and author of books including Changing the Conversation: The 17 Principles of Conflict Resolution. “We’re all fallible, and all of our actions are in some sense experiments.” She recommends adding: “You gave it a shot, and now we know.” That demonstrates appreciation for your friend’s efforts while keeping the door open for better results in the future.

Klein is a contributor for TIME. Nearly a third of American adults have some kind of allergy. If you’re one of them, you’re probably eager to find a solution. Allergy shots can provide long-lasting relief for certain non-food allergies, but there are some downsides. Is the time commitment, discomfort, and cost worth it? To help make that decision, here’s the latest science behind allergy immunotherapy, how long the effects of the shots last, and what the future of allergy shots may hold. Advertisement How do allergy shots work? Allergy shots have been around in one form or another since the 1910s. The idea is to desensitize an allergic person to a specific allergen, like pollen or cat dander. Your allergist will determine exactly what you’re allergic to and then “they make a specialized cocktail of allergens for that person,” says Dr. David Morris, chief of allergy and immunology at Dayton Children's Hospital. This cocktail contains very small, diluted amounts of those allergens and is then injected under your skin. “This stimulates the immune system to feel like these things are normal and not foreign,” says allergist Dr. J. Allen Meadows, executive director of advocacy and governmental affairs at the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (ACAAI) and a pediatric allergist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. After your shot, you’ll be observed for about 30 minutes. “This is because you do have the potential to have a reaction; we're giving you something injectable that you're allergic to,” Morris says. Serious reactions are rare but can be life-threatening, according to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology (AAAAI).

This week marks 100 days since President Donald Trump took office for a second term. In that time, Trump has made several moves that affect abortion and reproductive health care access across the country. Within his first month in office, Trump acted quickly on a number of issues related to reproductive health. He pardoned several anti-abortion protesters convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a law intended to protect abortion clinics and patients by barring people from physically blocking or threatening patients. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said it would be curtailing prosecutions against people accused of violating the FACE Act. The Department of Defense rescinded a Biden-era policy that helped facilitate travel for active service members and their families to obtain certain reproductive health care services, including abortion. Internationally, the Trump Administration’s freeze on foreign aid halted reproductive health care services for millions of people. Trump also reinstated what’s known as the Mexico City Policy or the Global Gag Rule, a policy often implemented by Republican presidents that prohibits foreign organizations receiving U.S. aid from providing or discussing abortion care. Advertisement Since February, the Trump Administration has taken additional actions that have limited or threatened access to reproductive health care. Here’s what else Trump has done on reproductive health care in his first 100 days—and what reproductive rights advocates fear could happen next. The Administration dropped a Biden-era lawsuit seeking to protect access to emergency abortions In March, the DOJ filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit it had inherited from the Biden Administration. The original lawsuit was about a federal law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires emergency rooms that receive Medicare dollars to stabilize patients experiencing medical emergencies before discharging or transferring them, whether or not the patient is able to pay. The Biden Administration had argued that emergency abortion care is required because of EMTALA, and that Idaho’s near-total abortion ban conflicted with the federal law. The state of Idaho has rejected that claim.

ave you ever been so exhausted you’ve skipped your skin-care routine and went straight to bed? Now imagine doing that every night. For most people, the idea might trigger fears of buildup, bacteria, oily skin, and breakouts. But a backlash is brewing to 10-step skin-care rituals: doing absolutely nothing. No cleansers, no exfoliants, no moisturizers—no water, even. Known as the “caveman method,” the counterintuitive way of “taking care” of your skin by ignoring it is gaining traction on social media. One woman on TikTok recently went viral after saying she gave up washing her face in order to repair her skin barrier, even though the process has caused her skin to become flaky with dead skin cells. Advertisement What actually happens when you stop washing your face? Is it even safe? We asked dermatologists. Is the “caveman method” good for your skin? The theory behind the method is that many skin-care products can strip the skin of its natural oils, disrupt its pH balance, and alter its natural microbiome. Forgoing all that, the caveman theory goes, restores your skin to its “natural” healthy state. However, whether this method is good for your skin, or anyone's skin, is a complicated question, says Dr. Nicole M. Golbari, a dermatologist at NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine. “Each face has its own unique and diverse microbiome,” she says. “We all have bacteria, fungus, and even tiny microscopic mites on our faces. While that may sound alarming, these microbes are part of our normal skin, and in order for our skin to function well, the skin microbiome needs the right balance of good microbes.”

In a study presented at the American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting, researchers report encouraging early results from research investigating a potential way to help some cancer patients avoid surgery. According to the results of the early study, published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine, 92% of patients who received only an immune-based treatment to help their own immune systems shrink their tumors—and no surgery, which is generally the standard treatment for them—showed no detectable signs of disease after two years. Advertisement Maureen Sideris, 71, was one of those patients. The New York resident was diagnosed with gastroesophageal junction cancer in 2022 after she noticed it was difficult for her to swallow and digest food. When she saw a cancer surgeon, he told her that surgery to remove the tumor they had detected would be her best treatment option. He also informed her that she would need chemotherapy and radiation following the surgery to kill as much of the cancer as possible. “I was freaking out,” says Sideris. For a certain period after the surgery, she wouldn’t be able to talk or lie flat at night to sleep. Then there was the chemotherapy and radiation. “There were a lot of steps to the recovery.” But based on the genetics of her cancer, she was told about a study of a new approach being pioneered by Dr. Andrea Cercek, section head of colorectal cancer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Cercek was testing whether people like Sideris could be treated with a checkpoint inhibitor, a relatively new type of cancer treatment that frees the body’s immune cells to recognize and attack cancer cells. If the treatment worked, it would mean Sideris might not need surgery. “They told me it was all experimental—'Are you okay with that?' I said, 'Sign me up,'” says Sideris.

More and more, climate change is taking a toll not only on communities, the environment, and the economy, but also on human minds. In recent years, researchers have been describing what they variously label eco-distress, exo-anxiety, or even eco-grief—a suite of symptoms including depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder—linked to experiencing severe weather events or simply living in a world in which climate change is becoming a growing crisis. Advertisement Whatever name the phenomenon goes by, it spares no one; simply by dint of being exposed to a warming world, you have cause to feel distress about it. Last year was the warmest one on record, edging out 2023, which had briefly held the number one spot. The top 10 warmest years have all occurred since 2014. Extreme weather and other disasters linked to climate change—including wildfires, droughts, floods, and hurricanes—are all on the rise. Experts are finding, however, that one demographic may suffer more than others: young people. A recent flurry of papers has documented significant and growing levels of climate anxiety in the 25-and-under group, with even preschoolers sometimes showing symptoms. “You come across it in children as young as three,” says Elizabeth Haase, a founding member of the Climate Psychiatry Alliance and a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Nevada School of Medicine. “You find them on TikTok, sobbing about losing their teddy bears or sobbing that animals they loved got killed” in an extreme weather event. Advertisement Grottoes bear the enduring touch of Tang Branded Content Grottoes bear the enduring touch of Tang By China Daily Now, researchers in peer-reviewed studies are putting empirical meat on those anecdotal bones. In one April 2025 paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), scientists surveyed nearly 3,000 young people in the U.S. aged 16-to-24 and found that approximately 20% of them were afraid to have children—worrying about bringing a new generation into a steadily warming world. That figure jumped to over 30% among young people who had experienced a severe-weather event first hand. An earlier 2021 study in The Lancet surveyed 10,000 16- to 25-year-olds in 10 countries, and came up with even more concerning results. Overall, nearly 60% of respondents described themselves as very or extremely worried about climate change and nearly 85% were at least moderately concerned. More than 45% of the total said that those feelings adversely affected their daily functioning. Fully 75% said that they think the future is frightening and 83% said that they believe the adults in charge have failed to take care of the planet—leaving the problem to the generations to follow.

Klein is a contributor for TIME. Whether you’re struggling to swallow with a sore throat or can’t keep anything down with a stomach bug, eating isn’t always your top priority when you’re under the weather. But “our bodies actually need nourishment when we're sick, so don't avoid eating,” says family physician Dr. Shannon Dowler, a board member of the American Academy of Family Physicians. In many cases, simply eating whatever appeals to you in the moment is enough to make sure you’re getting at least some nutrients and plenty of fluids. But if you can handle it, there are some specific foods that might actually ease your symptoms. Advertisement Here’s a guide to what to eat when you’re sick, tailored to whatever is ailing you. Stomach bug With an upset stomach, diarrhea, vomiting, or a combination of all three, you probably don’t feel very hungry or thirsty when you’ve got gastroenteritis. The problem is it’s easy to get dehydrated, says registered dietitian and certified specialist in oncology nutrition Amy Bragagnini, spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Dehydration can be dangerous and may result in headaches, fatigue, dizziness, and other unpleasant symptoms, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Bragagnini suggests getting plenty of water, coconut water, or electrolyte drinks while you’re battling a stomach bug. Start slowly, and add more liquids as you can tolerate them. “Take sips and spoonfuls rather than gulping large quantities of liquids,” Dowler says.

Changes in memory as you get older—frustrating as they might be—are completely normal. “It might become more difficult to access things as quickly, but you get into that state of, ‘If you give me a couple minutes, or you give me a cue or a clue, then yes, it’ll come back,’” says Dr. Daniel Lesley, a neurologist at Remo Health, a virtual dementia care company. “You aren’t quite as sharp as you were, but as long as you can set up strategies for yourself—like learning to write things down—you can make information much more accessible and know what’s important.” Advertisement We asked Lesley to share what to do the moment you start to feel your memory slipping, and little things you can do every day to keep your brain sharp.