When Derrick Stott was unexpectedly hospitalized, he didn't not know who would care for his service dog, Keller.

Thankfully, his counselor showed up in the right place at the right time and was able to help.

"I texted him and I didn't get a reply. I thought that was kind of odd because he's very meticulous about things. He's just really good about letting me know what's going on," said Michelle Hargis-Zuerlein, a mental health counselor with CHI Health Mercy Council Bluffs in Nebraska.

Hargis-Zuerlein says she was coming to pick up Stott, her client, for a support group session when she realized something was wrong.

"I came upstairs to the inside door in the apartments and I can hear his dog, Keller, kind of crying," said Hargis-Zuerlein.

When she went inside, she found Stott on the floor. He had been lying there for seven hours.

"My medical bracelet had cut into my wrist... I'd been laying there so long," Stott said.

Stott was taken to the hospital, where he spent two weeks recovering from a flu-related fever. During that time, Hargis-Zuerlein took in Keller and cared for her with her husband.

She and the dog even made trips to the hospital when Stott started to improve.

"Having her there for that time, snuggling with her, to give her up was really hard," said Hargis-Zuerlein. "But I knew that Derrick loves her and she takes care of him and this is where she needed to be."

Keller is back home now with Stott but got to reunite with her temporary caretaker on Thursday.

Now, the relationship between the two humans is closer than ever, thanks to one very lovable dog.

"You know, she's kind of my girl. And I'm not married, so she's kind of my little honey. I don't know what I'd do without her," Stott said about his dog.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Alice McMenamin loves her home. It's a place she shares with her husband and animals.

McMenamin has been living with Multiple Sclerosis since the 1990s. While it may not have impacted her spirit, it has impacted her ability to take care of herself.

McMenamin was forced to seek help, but she feared losing the freedom she has at home.

"It was very difficult," she said

In-home healthcare is expensive and in short supply. Kaiser Health News reported that home healthcare agencies are turning away 40% of referrals because of a lack of workers.

The shortage is blamed on burnout, low wages and being recruited away by hospitals and other work with better pay and hours. The median wage for an in-home healthcare worker is approximately $10 an hour.

According to PHI, an industry research group, there are just over 2 million home healthcare workers, but the 65 and older population is expected to double by 2050, reaching nearly 90 million.

The increased demand and decreasing supply have led to some creative solutions in the private sector.

Trina Kaplow is one of the founders of Alice Care, a new app-based home care provider. Similar to a rideshare app, clients can schedule help with a task, like a bath, and licensed home care providers can choose to take the task.

"The difference is a traditional agency will require a four-hour minimum and often multiple times a week, which can be very expensive and excessive," said Kaplow.

"It's super flexible and I decide what I'm going to do in the moment," said Maria Vazquez, a CNA who works as a provider on the app.

In this great resignation mindset of an economy, where the employee has more power, Vazquez believes a flexible schedule in a traditionally unflexible career is a gamechanger.

"I have three children. I'm still taking classes. I'm applying to nursing school. Like my life is hectic. That's the reason I gravitated towards it," said Vazquez said.

Industries are changing, and healthcare is no different. As more creative solutions are being found to address worker shortages, people like McMenamin are grateful something is being done.

"Eventually one of my complications will get, get the better of me, but until then, it's not gonna win," she said.

The CDC has released recommendations for the monkeypox vaccine as the virus continues to spread.

The health agency recommends that certain people who are at risk should get the Jynneos vaccine, including:

• People who work in laboratories doing research on orthopoxviruses

• People who work in clinical laboratories performing testing to diagnose orthopoxviruses,

• certain people responding to orthopoxvirus-related public health investigations, and

• health care personnel who care for patients infected with orthopoxviruses or administer another smallpox vaccine.

Earlier this week, the CDC said it was in the process of releasing some doses of the vaccine to people who had been in contact with infected patients.

The World Health Organization says nearly 200 cases of monkeypox have been reported in more than 20 countries not usually known to have outbreaks of the unusual disease but described the epidemic as “containable.”

Workplaces worldwide made efforts to prioritize mental health at the onset of the pandemic. Many companies are now starting to roll back on those efforts two years later, a survey from headspace health found.

Just 25% of employees said their workplace still focused on mental health. Meanwhile, a survey from the American Psychological Association found there is still a significant need for resources.

About 60% of employees reported experiencing negative impacts of work-related stress.

“We definitely don't want to see that fade back into the shadows,” said Dennis P. Stolle, a senior director of applied psychology at the APA. “It's a critically important issue, and it sends the wrong message to employees if companies begin to pull back from an emphasis on employee well-being.”

As an employee, he said, the biggest thing you can do to advocate for mental health resources is provide feedback to your employer.

“Some employers may be at a loss as to what should they actually do,” he said. “The science is clear in the peer-reviewed literature that good employee psychological well-being leads to factors like higher levels of employee engagement, more innovation, higher levels of team performance and all of that ultimately contributes to higher financial returns.”

Pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in America, but as more people step onto the court, many players also have to step into the doctor's office.

Valley doctors say the issue is two-fold: more people playing naturally leads to more injuries, and while more young people have picked up a paddle, most pickleball players are seniors.

"More folks who are older, maybe they were tennis players, but now because of arthritis and other problems, you have less amount of court to cover with pickleball," said ABC15 Health Insider Dr. Shad Marvasti.

He says older players mean bodies that are more prone to injury. Ankle sprains are among the most common injuries.

"The sudden movements, you're going to one side then pivot suddenly and can twist your ankle," said Dr. Marvasti.

Over-worked shoulders, rotator cuffs, and wrist fractures are common.

"Lose your balance, then fall on your outstretched hand and break it," he said.

Foot problems such as plantar fasciitis can also develop in athletes who've been on the court for a few years.

Dr. Marvasti says prevention is pretty straightforward: lots of stretching before you play.

The doctor suggests stretching your arms across your body, bending down to stretch your hamstrings and calves, and tracing the ABCs with your heel.

He also advises using sports bandages to pre-wrap any area with known injuries like knees or ankles.

Nohelani Graf at KNXV first reported this story.

If a person has to go to the bathroom while out in public, it may be difficult to find a toilet without some sort of catch. Often, it’s in a coffee shop, a convenience store, a pharmacy, or another private building, so it’s not a true public toilet.

The U.S. has eight public toilets per 100,000 people. That number is comparable with the rate in Botswana and far behind Iceland’s world-leading 56 public toilets per 100,000.

So why is it so hard to find a public toilet in the U.S.?

It’s a question with a complicated answer, and that has a long history. Surprisingly, it relates to many different issues, including public health, social services, and almost every form of discrimination imaginable.

Public toilets were a fact of life in the U.S. and elsewhere for centuries — at least as far back as the Roman Empire. But they were pretty public, without any walls or barriers between them. The expectation for privacy while going to the bathroom in a public space emerged in the 19th century, with the industrial revolution and houses with modern plumbing.

Later on, in the 19th century and into the early decades of the 20th century, sanitation became a greater priority. As leaders began understanding sanitation's role in containing outbreaks of waterborne diseases, cities built and celebrated their public toilets.

Temple University history professor Bryant Simon, who has studied and is writing an upcoming book on the history of toilets, shared more about how toilets used to be a big deal.

"City officials get on their soapboxes and brag about how much they spend on public bathrooms," Simon said. "They brag about the touch points in these bathrooms. They brag about the brass fittings. They brag about the marble countertops. They brag about the floors. They're proud of their accomplishment."

Bathrooms quickly became points where people were segregated. Bathrooms were split up by gender, as they still frequently are. But the splits can be broader than that and lead to discrimination against many different groups.

For example, public toilets started closing as early as the 1930s, with the LGBTQ community as a target.

"Beginning in the 1930s, 1940s, that early, public officials begin to complain about perversions," Simon said. "They begin to complain about same-sex sex in bathrooms. As there are fears about gay sex in bathrooms, there's fear about people drinking in bathrooms. It's not a very popular city sort of thing to build anymore."

In the first half of the 20th century, bathrooms often were segregated by race, with Black Americans, or Latinos in the Southwest, having their own separate facilities.

"The bathroom sort of operates as a kind of hardware of inequality because, essentially, you needed a public bathroom or a bathroom of some sort in order to be out and in public," Simon said.

Racial segregation in toilets may sound like a distant thing or a footnote, but that legacy extends into the present.

In 2018, two Black men were blocked from using the restroom at a Starbucks location in Philadelphia’s Center City. The incident prompted Starbucks to act as America's de facto public toilet. It changed its policy to allow people to use the restrooms at its more than 15,000 U.S. locations without buying anything.

While money can be a barrier to private toilets in stores, historically, it’s limited access to public standalone toilets. By the 1960s and '70s, public toilets requiring small payments sprung up, but those ended up closing after concerns about gender discrimination.

The other big push to remove public toilets came in the 1980s as part of a broader push to drive unhoused people to the edges of cities by taking away their access to public spaces and aggressively enforcing public urination laws.

Now if you don’t have a home of your own, it can put access to a restroom pretty far away.

"Most of us are used to having our own bathroom," said Raven Drake, Street Roots ambassador program manager. "Where I lived when I was unhoused, the nearest bathroom was a one-mile walk away. Imagine walking a mile to the bathroom, and most of us can't fathom walking 50 feet to our bathroom, much less a mile."

Drake works with unhoused people in Portland as part of the local newspaper Street Roots. She’s an advocate for bathroom access as a central part of addressing homelessness, and she was unhoused herself in late 2019 and early 2020 during some of the strictest shutdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We ran a survey around bathrooms, around the importance of bathrooms and access to clean water with the Joint Office of Homeless Services, and a resounding amount of people answered that they had no access to public restrooms," Drake said. "So we took forth on this initiative of placing throughout the city 172 port-a-potties."

Underinvestment has been a major concern, too. If public toilets aren’t funded or attended to, they can fall into disrepair. They can potentially become unsafe or unhygienic.

Starbucks announced in July that it would close 16 stores due to safety concerns. CEO Howard Schultz said in June that the coffee giant might restrict its currently public restrooms to customers only as part of its broader push for store safety.

So, if Starbucks decides to no longer serve as America’s public restroom, where will people be able to go? Even if a person isn't homeless, bathroom access advocates like American Restroom Association president Steven Soifer point out this is an issue.

"For everyone, for people with shy bladder, for people with incontinence, for people with bladder issues of different sorts," Soifer said. "People who had health issues and families with children who often struggle to find a place."

Soifer is calling on government officials to step up here, but it may have to be local officials taking the lead.

"There are going to be fewer and fewer options for people to be able to relieve themselves, and that becomes a public health issue as well," Soifer said.

The consequences can be deadly for communities if no bathrooms are available. In 2017, at least 16 people died, and hundreds more got sick in San Diego in an outbreak of hepatitis A.

The disease spread largely due to contact with fecal matter and public defecation.

The city acknowledged that a lack of public restrooms, especially for unhoused people, was part of the issue and helped contain the outbreak by installing public toilets and handwashing stations.

But even then, a lack of funding or upkeep can quickly lead to toilets disappearing. Earlier this year, San Diego State University researchers reported that many toilets were closed after the COVID-19 pandemic. That nearly half the county’s census tracts, home to 40% of the population, had no public restrooms.

Other cities are moving ahead with plans to install new public toilet facilities, including Portland, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. But there’s still a shortage of public toilets in the U.S., and it’s pretty dire.

In 2011, a United Nations independent expert, Catarina de Albuquerque, studied water and sanitation rights on a mission to the U.S. Her report found an instance in Sacramento, California, where public restroom closures and enforcement of public urination and defecation laws led to a homeless person traveling miles to dump a whole community’s human waste.

In the report, she indicated that the laws had a discriminatory effect and led to "a violation of human rights that may amount to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment.”

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BOSTON, Mass. — Often known as the silent killer, kidney disease impacts an estimated 35 million Americans.

Now, there's a new Smartphone app aiming to help break down barriers and diagnose patients early.

Paula LeClair is with a company called Healthy.io. A few weeks ago their app, "Minuteful Kidney: Home Urine Test," received FDA clearance. No trip to the doctor's office is needed.

"What we want to do is test everyone early and the earliest easiest way to do that is through the urine," LeClair said.

Instead, using a urine sample at home, people can run a screening test using their smartphone. Results usually appear in less than a minute.

"It’s not until late stages that they become symptomicatic, if they become, they are close to needing dialysis or a transplant," LeClair added.

There are broader implications to all this as well. People of color are four times more likely to have chronic kidney disease. The hope is that by breaking down barriers, especially for people who may not have access to a primary care provider, early detection can still be possible.

"It's such a large problem," she noted.

While this is the first app of its kind to be FDA approved for at-home kidney screenings, it's part of a growing list of FDA-approved mobile medical apps, including EKG readers, blood-pressure cuffs and pulse oximeters.

LONDON, England —

Video above: Queen Elizabeth Welcomes Britain’s New Prime Minister

Buckingham Palace said Thursday that Queen Elizabeth II is under medical supervision because doctors are “concerned for Her Majesty’s health," as members of her family traveled to be with the 96-year-old monarch in Scotland.

“Following further evaluation this morning, the Queen’s doctors are concerned for Her Majesty’s health and have recommended she remain under medical supervision,” the palace said in a statement that sparked deep concern.

The announcement comes a day after the queen canceled a meeting of her Privy Council and was told to rest. On Tuesday, she presided over the ceremonial handover power to new Prime Minister Liz Truss at her summer residence in Scotland at Balmoral Castle.

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The palace says the queen is “comfortable” and remains at Balmoral. Her son, Prince Charles, and grandson Prince William were traveling to be with her, officials said.

Truss — who was briefed on the news as she delivered a statement in the House of Commons — said “the whole country will be deeply concerned by the news from Buckingham Palace this lunchtime.”

“My thoughts — and the thoughts of people across our United Kingdom — are with Her Majesty The Queen and her family at this time,” she said on Twitter.

Elizabeth marked seven decades on the throne this year. She has increasingly handed over duties to her heir, Prince Charles, and other members of the royal family in recent months as she has struggled to get around.

Ryan Reynolds showed millions of fans the importance of getting a colonoscopy.

The actor said he lost a bet and agreed to record his experience getting the procedure. The 45-year-old posted the video on Instagram.

After the procedure, Reynolds' doctor informed him that a polyp was found.

"This was potentially lifesaving for you," Dr. Jonathan LaPook said. "I'm not kidding. I'm not being overly dramatic."

LaPook said he removed the polyp, which could have led to colon cancer.

"This saves lives pure and simple," he said.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends that adults aged 45 to 75 be screened for colorectal cancer.

Colorectal cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control.

It tastes like a tomato, smells like a tomato, and even looks (mostly) like a tomato. There's just one catch: It's purple.

The USDA has approved a genetically modified purple tomato, clearing the path for the unique fruit to be sold in American stores next year.

"From a plant pest risk perspective, this plant may be safely grown and used in breeding," the agency said in a September 7 news release.

The approval moves the purple tomato one step closer to widespread distribution. In addition to its unique color, the purple tomato also has health benefits and a longer shelf life than garden variety red tomatoes, scientists say.

The tomato was developed by a team of scientists, including British biochemist Cathie Martin, who is a professor at the University of East Anglia and a project leader at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, England.

Martin worked on pigment production in flowers for over 20 years, she told CNN. "I wanted to start projects where we could look and see whether there were health benefits for this particular group of pigments," she said.

The pigments that drew Martin's interest are anthocyanins, which give blueberries, blackberries and eggplants their rich blue-purple hues. With funding from a German consortium, she decided to engineer tomatoes that were rich in anthocyanins, hoping to "increase the antioxidant capacity" of the fruits.

By comparing regular tomatoes to the engineered purple tomatoes, she would be able to easily identify whether the anthocyanins were linked to any specific health benefits.

To engineer the purple tomatoes, the scientists used transcription factors from snapdragons to trigger the tomatoes to produce more anthocyanin, creating a vibrant purple color.

Martin and her colleagues published the first results of their research in 2008 in an article in Nature Biotechnology.

The results were "stunning," she said. Cancer-prone mice that ate the purple tomatoes lived around 30% longer than those that ate normal tomatoes, according to the study.

Martin said there are "many explanations" as to why anthocyanin-rich tomatoes may have health benefits. There are "probably multiple mechanisms involved," she said. "It's not like a drug, where there's a single target. It's about them having antioxidant capacity. It also may influence the composition of the microbiome, so it's better able to deal with digestion of other nutrients."

And in 2013, Martin and colleagues released a study that found the purple tomatoes had double the shelf life of their red cousins.

Martin established a spinout company, Norfolk Plant Sciences, to bring the purple tomatoes to market. Nathan Pumplin, the CEO of Norfolk's US-based commercial business, told CNN that the purple tomato "strikes a chord with people in this very basic way."

The distinctive purple color means that "it takes no imagination to see that it's different," Pumplin said. "It really allows people to make a choice."

FDA approval and commercialization are next steps

In the past, forays into genetically modified foods have often focused on engineering crops that are more sustainable to produce, he added. But for consumers, the benefits of eating a genetically modified food are murky.

"It's very abstract, hard to understand," Pumplin said. "But a purple tomato -- you either choose or choose not to consume." The difference between the GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) product and the non-modified tomato are stark -- and the possible health benefits for consumers are also clear.

Pumplin says that consumers are "warming up" to genetically modified foods across the world.

"We look at the problems facing our society as far as sustainability, climate change, health tied to diet and nutrition, and what's clear from the response from our announcement is that it's a really important topic to a lot of people," he said. "I'm encouraged that a lot of people are starting to relook at biotechnology in light of the important challenges."

At the same time, "GMOs are not a silver bullet," he said. "It's one tool in our toolbox as plant scientists, as scientists, agronomists, to improve the food production system."

The next steps for the purple tomato are FDA approval and commercialization, Pumplin said. "We need to breed excellent, delicious purple tomatoes. We need to work with producers to produce them and distribute them."

Norfolk will begin to launch limited test markets in 2023 to identify which consumers are most interested in purple tomatoes.

As for the taste? The purple tomato is indistinguishable from your standard red tomato, Pumplin said.

"It tastes like a great tomato," he said.

Public health has been top of mind for many the last couple of years, but a public health problem has largely flown under the radar: a growing rate of sexually transmitted diseases and infections.

The number of STD and STI cases among Americans has been rising steadily each year since 2014. Even the pandemic, which trapped millions inside their homes, didn't make a dent in those numbers, and it might have worsened.

These rising numbers have led many health officials to raise an alarm and urge action. Many experts believe one of the causes behind this problem is the lack of knowledge about the basic principles of safe sex, typically taught in sex education classes.

In fact, a Centers for Disease Control survey from 2019 showed that nearly 46% of sexually active high school students did not use a condom the last time they had sex. That's a huge problem considering the fact that out of all new STDs reported to the CDC each year, half were among young people aged 15 to 24.

The numbers show there were 2.4 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis in 2020, which is the most recent year of data.

Chlamydia is currently the most common STD in the U.S., with 1.6 million cases reported to the CDC that year. While its numbers saw a slight drop from 2016, the CDC notes that the drops are probably not really because of an actual drop in infections. Since chlamydia is usually asymptomatic, case rates are heavily influenced by screening coverage, which the pandemic worsened.

Although overall cases of STDs and STIs fell in the pandemic's early months, the CDC acknowledges that's likely due to the reduced frequency of in-person health care services, resulting in fewer screenings. STD test and lab supply shortages, the diversion of health workers to pandemic response teams, and lapses in health insurance due to unemployment also contributed. Plus, the pandemic came after years of cuts to public health funding.

As anticipated by many experts, numbers picked up again at the end of 2020, with other diseases like gonorrhea and syphilis surpassing 2019 levels, according to CDC data. Preliminary data from 2021 shows there were more than 2.5 million reported cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis in that year, meaning STDs and STIs continued to increase during the second year of the pandemic too, with no signs of slowing.

The CDC says it's likely, "...we may never know the full impact of the pandemic on STDs. What is clear, however, is the state of STDs did not improve in the United States. Prevention and control efforts remain as important as ever."

But, the country's prevention and control methods need work. Comprehensive sex ed programs would be a start on prevention among the most commonly affected age group, but robust public testing and information campaigns could help all Americans. Public health funding, however, has faced slashes for years, taking a toll on STD screening and prevention efforts.

"Public funding cuts will prevent the public health system, the safety net, of being able to track down people's partners so that your index patient doesn't get reinfected because their partner was also treated appropriately," said Dr. Anna Maya Powell, co-director of the Johns Hopkins HIV Women's Program. "It's easy to say, 'People should take personal responsibility and come in for care,' but I think the picture is much more complex than that."

Only 2.5% of all U.S. health spending— about $3.8 trillion — is spent on public health and prevention programs. Last year, the Biden administration did announce a $1.13 billion investment to strengthen the disease intervention specialists (DIS) workforce at the CDC. Still, much of that funding seems to be for the agency's pandemic response.

Still, there's a reason for some optimism: There has been progressing on STDs and STIs since the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 90s. The STI spread rapidly in the country then, especially among certain groups, like men who have sex with other men.

Years of public information campaigns and research into treatment brought numbers down through the early 2000s and to a stable level by 2013. More recent figures may seem to hint at further progress on the overall HIV cases during the early pandemic, but those figures are also misleading because of the sharp drop in testing.

Plus, many experts have criticized the focus of historic HIV treatment and prevention efforts as largely being focused on treating rich, white, gay men and transgender groups, leaving out many lower-income Americans, people of color and women.

Women generally face a greater burden when it comes to sexual health. Many studies have established that women have a higher biological risk for contracting many STIs and HIV than men, with a higher probability of transmission from men to women.

"Women tend to be more asymptomatic for a lot of a lot of the conditions we're talking about," Dr. Powell said. "Not having symptoms maybe gives people a false sense of security, and then they don't come in to get the routine screening that they might have otherwise if things were open and accessible."

Black women, in particular, suffer higher numbers of both HIV and other STDs like herpes, and many experts say public prevention efforts have failed to address these groups adequately. Overall, inconsistent access to health care and prevention programs across different demographics throughout the country has affected our national battle against STDs and STIs.

"We have had data that shows consistently what we need to be doing in the sexually transmitted infections, those cases in reproductive health," said Dr. Mati Hlatshwayo Davis, director of health for the city of St. Louis, Missouri. "We need to make sure that those policies are as standardized as possible so that they're easily implementable and therefore easy to track data, data that then feeds back into the funding."

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This flu season is expected to be more intense than the past few seasons.

“This upcoming flu season is not going to be like the past two flu seasons which were virtually non-existent because of all the social distancing and mask wearing,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said.

Australia recently reported its worst flu season in five years. How the flu season goes in the Southern Hemisphere is a strong indicator for the Northern Hemisphere’s flu season.

“It should be a flu season that is reminiscent of those pre-pandemic,” Dr. Adalja said. He recommends his patients to get a flu shot late October to early November.

Experts say the elderly are at the highest risk for severe disease.

“There are a lot of different flu vaccines and it’s important to talk to your doctor to see which might be the best for you,” Dr. Adalja said.

There are three flu vaccines preferentially recommended for people 65 year or older, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Those include the Fluzone High-Dose Quadrivalent vaccine, Flublok Quadrivalent recombinant flu vaccine and Fluad Quadrivalent adjuvanted flu vaccine.

Vaccine effectiveness can vary, but recent studies show flu vaccination reduces the risk of flu illness by between 40 and 60 percent, according to the CDC.

Dr. Adalja said you can get a flu vaccine and a COVID booster shot at the same time.

“You may have a little bit more side effects when you do that but it is something you can do for convenience,” he said.

On average, up to 41 million people catch the flu every year, which can result in up to 52,000 deaths, according to the CDC.

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Prosecution witness and former Theranos lab director Adam Rosendorff stood by his earlier testimony during a court appearance in Elizabeth Holmes' fraud trial on Monday. Rosendorff's statements could pave the way for Holmes' sentencing in the case, which was postponed after Rosendorff sought to speak with Holmes following the trial.

Rosendorff made an uninvited visit to Holmes' Silicon Valley home in August, following her conviction for investor fraud. While he didn't speak to Holmes directly, Rosendorff told her partner William Evans that "he tried to answer the questions honestly but that the prosecutors tried to make everyone look bad" and felt "he had done something wrong," according to Evans' recollection of the conversation filed with the court.

Under questioning by U.S. District Judge Edward Davila, Rosendorff said his testimony in the trial was truthful. He said he felt remorseful about the possibility that Holmes' young child with Evans would be without her mother if Holmes is sentenced to prison.

Rosendorff added, without explanation, that "it is my understanding she is pregnant again." The Associated Press has not verified that information.

Under grilling by Holmes attorney Lance Wade, Rosendorff said flatly: "The government was trying to get to the truth of what happened -- what Elizabeth Holmes did."

"I don't want to help Ms. Holmes," Rosendorff added. "The only person that can help her is herself. She needs to pay her debt to society."

Holmes' legal team is relying heavily on Rosendorff's post-trial action to help the former entrepreneur avoid a prison sentence. Her lawyers filed a motion for a new trial in August based on Rosendorff's alleged statements to Evans.

Holmes, 38, is facing up to 20 years in prison for misleading investors about the progress her once-heralded startup Theranos was making with new blood-testing methods. She was supposed to be sentenced Monday, but the judge postponed that hearing once the Rosendorff questions arose. The judge had already set a new sentencing date for Holmes on Nov. 18 before the Monday hearing began.

Video above: Sleep specialist explains what lawmakers got wrong with permanent daylight saving time bill

The end of daylight saving time is upon us again, an autumn tradition when the United States, Europe, most of Canada and a number of other countries move their clocks backwards an hour in a sort of Groundhog Day trust fall. We'll move them forward (again) next spring when governments put daylight saving back in place.

But are we putting our trust in an unhealthy, outdated idea?

Not according to the United States Senate, which in March passed the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021 -- if it becomes law, daylight saving time will be permanent.

"The call to end the antiquated practice of clock changing is gaining momentum throughout the nation," said Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), who first introduced the bill in the U.S. Senate, in a statement. Florida's legislature voted to make daylight saving time permanent in Florida in 2018, but it can't go into effect until it is federal law as well.

The bill still has to make its way through the U.S. House of Representatives and be signed into law by the president. If or when that is the case, we'll move our clocks forward and leave them that way, permanently living one hour ahead of the sun.

However, a growing number of sleep experts say the act of moving our clocks forward in the spring is ruining our health. Studies over the last 25 years have shown the one-hour change disrupts body rhythms tuned to Earth's rotation, adding fuel to the debate over whether having daylight saving time in any form is a good idea.

"I'm one of the many sleep experts that knows it's a bad idea," said Dr. Elizabeth Klerman, a professor of neurology in the division of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School.

"Your body clock stays with (natural) light, not with the clock on your wall," Klerman said. "And there's no evidence that your body fully shifts to the new time."

Dr. Phyllis Zee, director of the Center for Circadian and Sleep Medicine at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Evanston, Illinois, also opposes daylight saving time.

"Between March and November your body gets less morning light and more evening light, which can throw off your circadian rhythm," she said.

Standard time, which we enter when we move our clocks back in the fall, is much closer to the sun's day and night cycle, Zee said. This cycle has set our circadian rhythm, or body clock, for centuries.

Video below: As clocks 'fall back,' here's where Mass. residents stand on daylight saving time

That internal timer controls not just when you sleep, but also when you want to eat, exercise or work, as well as "your blood pressure, your heart rate and your cortisol rhythm," Zee added.

A call to ban daylight saving time for good has come from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine: "Current evidence best supports the adoption of year-round standard time, which aligns best with human circadian biology and provides distinct benefits for public health and safety."

The proposal has been endorsed by more than 20 medical, scientific, and civic organizations, including the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the National Parent Teacher Association, the National Safety Council, the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms and the World Sleep Society.

What's the harm?

When our internal clocks are offset from the solar day-night cycle by even one hour we develop what sleep experts call "social jet lag." Studies have shown social jet lag increases the risk of metabolic disorders such as diabetes, raises the risk of heart disease and stroke, worsens mood disorders such as depression, affects the digestive and endocrine systems and shortens our sleep duration. It can even reduce life expectancy,

A 2003 study found getting one hour less sleep for two weeks had the same effect on thinking and motor skills as going without sleep for two full nights. Reducing sleep by 90 minutes from the recommended 7 to 8 hours for adults altered the DNA of immune cells and boosted inflammation, a key cause of chronic disease, according to another study.

Making the time change permanent would make the chronic effects of any sleep loss more severe, not only "because we have to go to work an hour earlier for an additional 5 months every year but also because body clocks are usually later in winter than in summer with reference to the sun clock," according to a statement from the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms.

"The combination of DST and winter would therefore make the differences between body clocks and the social clock even worse and would negatively affect our health even more," the authors concluded.

Video below: Permanent daylight saving time would reduce deer crashes, study says

Why did the Senate pass the bill?

There are reasons the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Sunshine Protection Act. Proponents say that extra daylight in the evening cuts down on car accidents and crime, and increases opportunities for commerce and recreation, as people prefer to shop and exercise during daylight hours.

However, research has shown both heart attacks and fatal car accidents increase after the clock falls forward in the spring. Children also end up going to school in the morning while it is still dark -- with disastrous consequences.

When President Richard Nixon signed a permanent daylight saving time into law in January 1974, it was a popular move. But by the end of the month, Florida's governor had called for the law's repeal after eight schoolchildren were hit by cars in the dark. Schools across the country delayed start times until the sun came up.

Video below: Sleep specialist explains what lawmakers got wrong with permanent daylight saving time bill

By summer, public approval had plummeted, and in early October Congress voted to switch back to standard time.

A similar backlash occurred when the U.S. first implemented daylight saving time in 1918, as a way to reduce demand for electricity usage by adding sunlight to the end of the day in response to World War I. (Studies since have found little to no cost savings from the practice.) The time switch was so unpopular that the law was repealed the following year.

"The United States has tried permanent daylight saving time twice before and ended it early. The UK tried once before and ended it early. Russia tried it once, so did India and ended it early," Klerman said. "I think we should learn from history."

Millions of families will gather for Thanksgiving. It's a significant shift from the height of the pandemic when families remained isolated out of fear of spreading COVID-19.

The virus has not gone away. However, Americans are more protected than ever due to vaccines and prior infections.

The Centers for Disease Control reports about 289,000 weekly cases of COVID-19. At the same time last year, that number was more than double. Hospitalizations are also down dramatically this year compared to 2021.

Health officials still recommend getting vaccinated or boosted to protect against the virus. In addition, they are warning about the spread of flu and RSV. There is a vaccine to protect against the flu, but there is no vaccine for RSV.

To avoid spreading potentially-dangerous germs, the CDC recommends:

• Cover your coughs and sneezes with a tissue or your upper shirt sleeve, not your hands
• Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds
• Avoid close contact, such as kissing, shaking hands, and sharing cups and eating utensils, with others
• Clean frequently touched surfaces such as doorknobs and mobile devices

Germs from other people aren't the only things to worry about on Thanksgiving. The USDA says people should follow basic steps
to protect against foodborne illnesses.

• Clean and sanitize
• Avoid cross-contamination
• Thaw the turkey safely (Never thaw your turkey in hot water or leave it on a countertop.)
• Cook food thoroughly
• Avoid stuffing turkey as it often leads to bacteria growth
• Don’t leave your food sitting out too long (Refrigerate all perishable foods sitting out at room temperature within two hours of being cooked, or one hour if the temperature is 90 F or above.)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s 988 hotline, intended to help anyone experiencing a mental health emergency, was back up and running Friday after a daylong outage.

The call service, which was launched in July, was restored shortly before midnight on Thursday. People experiencing a mental health crisis were still able to reach a mental health counselor by texting 988 or by visiting 988lifeline.org to start a chat.

The federal government is investigating the hotline's outage, Health and Human Services spokeswoman Sarah Lovenheim said in a tweet late Thursday night.

“While HHS and VA immediately acted to provide support to 988 callers via text, chat, and alternate numbers, the disruption of phone service was unacceptable, and HHS continues to investigate the root cause of the outage,” she tweeted, referencing the acronym for Veterans Affairs.

The 988 hotline is a national helpline staffed with mental health counselors around the country that’s designed to be as easy to remember as the emergency line, 911. Since its launch, the hotline has fielded roughly 8,000 phone calls a day from those seeking mental health help.

The telecommunications company Intrado, based in Omaha, Nebraska, is the largest U.S. provider of e911 services and provides the backend plumbing for emergency communication services like the 988 helpline. The company did not return repeated requests for comment.

In a statement on Intrado's website on Thursday, the company said it was “working as quickly as possible to resume full service.” The outage also impacted the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Disaster Distress Helpline.

Telecoms analyst Roger Entner, of Recon Analytics, said he didn't think there was "anything malicious” in the outage.

“Stuff like this almost always happens when an upgrade goes wrong,” Entner said. Normally, these outages occur when “they try to improve or fix something small and they break something big. That’s the most likely answer here.”

La Dallas Mitchell is working overtime to care for her daughter.

"It's just been nonstop," Mitchell said. "She's probably been sick like five times."

At the same time, parenting means working around that sickness.

The U.S. is the only developed country that does not guarantee any paid sick leave, according to the Center for Economic Policy and Research, though some states like New York, New Jersey and California have laws with requirements.

Medical experts say the surge of viruses right now highlights the need for paid sick time off.

"With RSV, COVID and the flu, this is very taxing to the health care system but also taxing to our families," said Dr. Willie Underwood, with the American Medical Association. "People get sick and ill; they can't work. They have increased health care costs. It's detrimental to us."

In October, a record high 104,000 Americans missed work due to "childcare problems," according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A recent Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report found workers lost $28 billion in wages during 2020 to 2022. Women, Latino, and Black workers felt the brunt of it. It also found people making less than $25,000 a year were about 2.5 times more likely to not have paid sick leave compared to someone making $100,000.

Epidemiologist and research director Mona Shah worked on the foundation report.

"For a family member who had to take off a week of work to take care of themselves or their child, that meant they lost an average of $815 in wages," Shah said. "That would have huge implications for paying for food, housing, health care, gas and other essentials."

SEE MORE: Doctors: Get Your Flu, COVID Vaccines Now To Be Safe During Holidays

Shah says when someone works while they or a loved one is sick, it impacts more than that single household.

"They're working when they're sick, and they're potentially impacting the people that they come across, whether at work or at school, and so it's really a compounding effect," Shah said.

She said that's why paid time off is important for a community to stay healthy, especially during busy holiday seasons.

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WASHINGTON —

Related video above: Doctors give their top tips for maximizing an appointment

The next time you message your doctor to ask about a pesky cough or an itchy rash, you may want to check your bank account first — you could get a bill for the question.

Hospital systems around the country are rolling out fees for some messages that patients send to physicians, who they say are spending an increasing amount of time poring over online queries, some so complex that they require the level of medical expertise normally dispensed during an office visit.

Patient advocates, however, worry these new fees may deter people from reaching out to their doctor and that they add another layer of complexity to the U.S. health care system's already opaque billing process.

"This is a barrier that denies access and will result in hesitancy or fear to communicate and potentially harm patients with lower quality of care and outcomes at a much higher cost," said Cynthia Fisher, the founder of Patient Rights Advocate, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit that pushes for hospital price transparency.

The explosion of telehealth over the last three years — driven by the COVID-19 outbreak and relaxed federal regulations for online care — prompted many doctors to adopt more robust telecommunication with their patients. Consultations that once happened in an office were converted to computer or smart phone visits. And health care systems invited patients to use new online portals to message their doctors with a question at any time, American Medical Association president Jack Resneck Jr. told The Associated Press.

"When people figured out this is cool and could improve care, you saw hospitals and practice groups saying to patients, welcome to your portal ... you can ping your physician with questions if you want," Resneck said. "We found ourselves as physicians getting dozens and dozens of these a day and not having time built in to do that work."

The charges vary for each patient and hospital system, with messages costing as little as $3 for Medicare patients to as much $160 for the uninsured. In some cases, the final bill depends on how much time the doctor spends responding.

Health systems that have introduced these new policies, many in recent months, say they automatically alert patients that they may be charged when they message their doctor through online portals, such as MyChart, an online system that many organizations now use for scheduling appointments or releasing test results to patients.

Under new billing rules devised during the pandemic, doctors are permitted to bill Medicare for as little as 5 minutes of time spent on an online message in a seven-day period, according to the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare.

Doctors need to be paid for the time they spend doling out expert medical advice — even over messages, said University of Chicago health economist Katherine Baicker. But it's also important that hospital systems are transparent about what patients can expect to pay as they roll out these new charges, she added.

"Co-pays do not accomplish anything when they are not clear for patients ahead of time," Baicker said.

Physicians at University of California San Francisco Health field roughly 900,000 email threads — 3 million total messages — in a year, according to Jess Berthold, a spokesperson for the system.

The hospital announced in November 2021 it would start charging for some of those messages, after noting a spike during the pandemic. During a year's time, 1.4% of email threads, or about 13,000, have resulted in a bill.

Only certain messages trigger a charge. Patients won't be charged, for example, for prescription refills, scheduling an appointment, asking a follow-up question about an office visit within the last seven days, or if their doctor advises they should schedule a visit in response.

What types of messages will prompt a bill? Sending your doctor a picture of a new rash, asking for a form to be filled out or requesting a change in medication.

Navigating how much you might end up owing can be trickier.

At UCSF, patients on Medicaid who message their doctor won't have any out-of-pocket costs, and those on traditional Medicare may have to pay $3 to $6. Patients on private insurance will be billed a co-pay — typically about $20 — as will patients on Medicare Advantage, the private insurance plans for Medicare.

Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, the latest major hospital system to announce charges for online messages, rolled out similar guidelines late last month, with messages costing as much as $50 for those on private insurance. And at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, which charges $35 for some messages, fewer than 1% of those correspondences resulted in a bill, spokesman Christopher King said.

All of those systems use the online portal MyChart. Epic, the privately owned software company that runs MyChart, does not track which health systems charge patients for messages, spokeswoman Barb Herandez said in an email. The company did not answer questions about whether it receives a share of the fees from those charges.

Giving patients advice online can save a patient time or money in the long run, hospital systems argue. If the doctor can answer a patient's question over email, the patient can cut out wait times for an appointment and avoid taking time off work to go to the doctor's office.

Plus, some patients simply prefer the convenience of getting a quick answer from the doctor on an app, Berthold of UCSF added.

"If patients can have access to a doctor right when questions or concerns arise, they can seek care more quickly and be treated more quickly," Berthold said.

But Fisher argues it could have the opposite effect with patients thinking twice before they message a doctor. Instead, some people may turn to free, unreliable advice online.

"It becomes a slippery slope, and that slippery slope is not in favor of the patient," she said.

Three years on since the COVID-19 outbreak turned into a global pandemic and another new coronavirus variant has surfaced.

The omicron subvariant named XBB.1.5 has caused just over 40% of new coronavirus infections in the United States, the CDC says.

About 75% of new coronavirus cases in the Northeastern U.S. are from the XBB.1.5 strain.

Dr. Barbara Mahon, director of the CDC's proposed Coronavirus and Other Respiratory Viruses Division, said, "We're projecting that it's going to be the dominant variant in the Northeast region of the country and that it's going to increase in all regions of the country," CBS News reported.

Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, said, "Probably the worst variant that the world is facing right now is actually XBB," according to Reuters.

Dr. Jay Varma of Cornell Medicine said this is a very "precarious" time for the U.S. health care system and public health experts worry about a possible surge in infections.

Varma also said that Americans shouldn't be overly alarmed as the variant is expected to cause similar issues seen earlier this year, he told PBS.

Experts urge the public to take similar precautions as people were asked to do earlier in the year and last year to slow the spread, including wearing a mask whenever possible, such as when traveling.

The CDC said that at this point, there isn't the belief that "XBB.1.5 is more severe" compared to COVID-19.

Public health officials also haven't reported additional symptoms tied to the XBB.1.5 strain outside of symptoms listed with previous variants and COVID-19.

Axios reported that in October, health officials deemed the XBB.1.5 variant as well suited to evade COVID-19 immunity.

A Wall Street Journal report pointed to health experts who have highlighted studies suggesting that this new variant can evade existing vaccines, antibodies from prior infections along with existing monoclonal antibody treatments.

A study in the journal Nature said, “Such rapid and simultaneous emergence of multiple variants with enormous growth advantages is unprecedented.”

ROME —

Pope Francis underwent successful surgery Wednesday to remove intestinal scar tissue and repair a hernia in his abdominal wall, the latest maladies to befall the 86-year-old pontiff who had part of his colon removed two years ago.

The Vatican said there were no complications during the three-hour surgery, which required Francis to be under general anesthesia. The pontiff was expected to remain at Rome’s Gemelli hospital for several days, and all papal audiences were canceled through June 18.

Dr. Sergio Alfieri, director of abdominal and endocrine sciences at Gemelli, who also performed Francis’ 2021 colon surgery, said the operation was successful. A short time later, the pope was awake, alert and even joking.

“When will we do the third one?” he quoted Francis as saying.

During the operation, doctors removed adhesions, or internal scarring, on the intestine that had caused a partial blockage, as well as pain in recent months. Alfieri revealed that Francis had undergone previous undisclosed abdominal surgeries sometime before 2013 in Argentina, which had also caused scarring.

To repair the hernia that had formed over a previous scar, a prosthetic mesh was placed in the abdominal wall, Alfieri said. He added that the pope was suffering from no other pathologies, that the tissue removed was benign and that after he recovers, he should be fine.

A feared protrusion, or bulging of the intestine through the hernia tear, was apparently not found.

“It appears they operated on him in a timely fashion with no compromise to his intestine,” said Dr. Walter Longo, chief of colon and rectal surgery at Yale University School of Medicine, who did not participate in the surgery and commented after consulting the Vatican statement on the procedure.

Video below: Pope Francis hospitalized in July 2021 for intestinal surgery

Hernia operations are rarely performed on an emergency basis, and Alfieri said the surgery had been planned. While unannounced publicly, it appeared timed so Francis would have ample time for recovery ahead of a busy travel schedule later this summer.

At three hours, the pope’s procedure was considerably longer than the standard 60 to 90 minutes doctors say a hernia operation usually takes, but Alfieri noted that the scar tissue from the previous surgeries was completely removed.

Spending more time under anesthesia, coupled with being on a ventilator for so long — in someone who has lost part of one lung as a young man — could put the pontiff at risk of breathing complications or a longer-than-expected recovery time, experts said.

Francis remained in charge of the Vatican and the 1.3-billion-strong Catholic Church, even while unconscious and in the hospital, according to canon law.

In July 2021, Francis spent 10 days at Gemelli to remove 13 inches of his large intestine. In an interview with The Associated Press in January, Francis said the diverticulosis, or bulges in his intestinal wall, that prompted that surgery had returned.

After that surgery, Francis lamented that he hadn’t responded well to the general anesthetic. That reaction in part explained his refusal to have surgery to repair strained knee ligaments that have forced him to use a wheelchair and walker for over a year.

However, Alfieri said Francis had no adverse reactions to the anesthesia in 2021 or Wednesday.

“Clearly no one likes to be operated on and put to sleep because the moment we're put under, we lose consciousness,” he told an evening news conference at the hospital with the Vatican spokesman by his side. "But there was no physiological problem two years ago or today."

Dr. Manish Chand, a professor of surgery at University College London who specializes in colorectal surgery, said the greatest issue afterwards would be pain management and making sure the wound heals properly.

“In the first six weeks after this type of surgery, you’re at risk of getting a recurrence again,” he said. To avoid that, patients are advised not to do anything strenuous.

Dr. Robin Phillips, an emeritus professor of colorectal surgery at Imperial College London, pointed out that abdominal surgery can also compromise lung function.

The Argentine pope had part of one lung removed when he was a young man. In late March, Francis spent three days at Gemelli for bronchitis and was treated with intravenous antibiotics. He emerged April 1 saying “Still alive!”

“I suspect they are doing it now because they are worried it might become more complicated and result in an emergency operation, which would carry an even bigger risk than leaving it alone or operating now,” Phillips said.

After celebrating his weekly general audience Wednesday, the pope was driven in his Fiat 500 out of the Vatican shortly after 11 a.m. and arrived at the Gemelli some 20 minutes later, escorted by police.

“The stay at the health facility will last several days to allow for the normal post-operative course and full functional recovery,” the Vatican said in a statement.

The pope had appeared in good form Wednesday morning at his audience in St. Peter’s Square, zipping around the square in his popemobile greeting the faithful. He also had two meetings beforehand, the Vatican said.

Francis has had a packed schedule of late, with multiple audiences each day. The Vatican recently confirmed a travel-filled August, when the Holy See and Italy are usually on vacation. He has a four-day visit to Portugal scheduled for the first week of August and a similarly long trip to Mongolia starting Aug. 31.

In a sign that the trips were still on, the Vatican on Tuesday released the planned itinerary for Francis’ visit to Portugal for World Youth Day events from Aug. 2 to Aug. 6. The busy schedule includes all the protocol meetings of an official state visit plus multiple events with young people and a day trip to the Marian shrine at Fatima.

Walgreens and CVS plan to provide abortion pills following the Food and Drug Administrations rule change that broadens availability for the pills.

The Biden administration partially implemented the change last year, announcing it would no longer enforce a long-standing requirement that women pick up the medicine in person. Tuesday's action formally updates the drug's labeling to allow many more retail pharmacies to dispense the pills, so long as they complete a certification process.

In a statement, Walgreens said it intends to become a certified pharmacy under the program.

"We are working through the registration, necessary training of our pharmacists, as well as evaluating our pharmacy network in terms of where we normally dispense products that have extra FDA requirements and will dispense these consistent with federal and state laws," Walgreens stated.

The rule change’s impact has been blunted by numerous state laws limiting abortion broadly and the pills specifically. Legal experts foresee years of court battles over access to the pills, as abortion-rights proponents bring test cases to challenge state restrictions.

CVS said it plans to seek certification after reviewing the FDA's updated Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy drug safety program for mifepristone, the generic name of the drug.

"We plan to seek certification to dispense mifepristone where legally permissible following that review," CVS said in a statement.

For more than 20 years, the FDA labeling had limited dispensing to a subset of specialty offices and clinics, due to safety concerns. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA temporarily suspended the in-person requirement. The agency later said a new scientific review by agency staff supported easing access, concurring with numerous medical societies that had long said the restriction wasn't necessary.

Two drugmakers that make brand-name and generic versions of abortion pills requested the latest FDA label update. Agency rules require a company to file an application before modifying dispensing restrictions on drugs.

Danco Laboratories, which sells branded Mifeprex, said in a statement the change “is critically important to expanding access to medication abortion services and will provide healthcare providers” with another option for prescribing the drug.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists called the update an “important step" forward.

“Although the FDA’s announcement today will not solve access issues for every person seeking abortion care, it will allow more patients who need mifepristone for medication abortion additional options to secure this vital drug,” the group said in a statement.

More than half of U.S. abortions are now done with pills rather than surgery, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

The FDA in 2000 approved mifepristone to terminate pregnancies of up to 10 weeks, when used with a second drug, misoprostol. Mifepristone is taken first to dilate the cervix and block the hormone progesterone, which is needed to sustain a pregnancy. Misoprostol is taken 24 to 48 hours later, causing the uterus to contract and expel pregnancy tissue.

Bleeding is a common side effect, though serious complications are very rare. The FDA says more than 3.7 million U.S. women have used mifepristone since its approval.

Several FDA-mandated safety requirements remain in effect, including training requirements to certify that prescribers can provide emergency care in the case of excessive bleeding. Pharmacies that dispense the pills also need a certification.

Sure, you've heard the dangers of sitting all day, but with most jobs there isn't much you can do about it, right?

Not according to a new study, which looked into the impacts of prolonged sitting.

Five minutes of light walking every half hour can help alleviate some of the increased risk that comes with sitting for long stretches of the day, according to the study published Thursday in the journal of the American College of Sports Medicine.

The scientific community has known for decades that sitting can increase risk of chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease and certain types of cancers, said Keith Diaz, the study's lead author and assistant professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. But until now there haven't been clear guidelines about how long you can sit and how often you should be moving.

"We've known for probably about a decade now that sitting increases your risk for most chronic diseases and increases your risk for early death," said Diaz, who is also director of the Exercise Testing Laboratory at the university's Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health. "Just like how much fruits and vegetables they should eat and how much exercise they should do, we need to give (people) specific guidance on how to combat the harms of sitting."

The walk can be as light as 1.9 miles per hour, which is slower than most people walk normally, Diaz said. The goal is to just break up the sitting with some movement.

Several health markers were measured for different combinations of periods spent sitting and walking for this study. Although the sample size was small, the study was rigorous with strong methodology, said Matthew Buman, director of the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University. Buman was not involved in the study.

Video below: Five clear signs you're not getting enough physical activity

Scientists don't yet know exactly why sitting is so bad, but the working theory is that muscles are important in regulating things like blood sugar and cholesterol levels. But when you sit for too long, your muscles don't have the opportunity to contract and operate optimally, Diaz said.

Does five minutes every half hour still seem like a stretch? Even little "activity snacks" like one minute of walking every hour was shown to reduce blood pressure in study participants by a "sizable amount," Diaz said.

And all the participants in the study were generally healthy adults, meaning that those with chronic conditions may see an even greater benefit, Buman said.

Why your boss should greenlight it

Even with clearer guidelines, moving regularly may still seem unattainable if office culture doesn't promote it.

"There are so many of us who lead inactive or sitting-based lifestyles or have sitting-based jobs," Diaz said. "There are these social norms where if you are up out of your desk, people think you're not working."

Diaz has been working to convince employers of the importance of moving during the workday — not only for individual health but for the bottom line, too.

"Sitting is an occupational hazard and a healthy employee is a more productive employee," he said.

The team found that there were more than just physical health benefits for participants who broke up their sitting. They also found that it reduced fatigue and improved mood, Diaz said.

"Just sitting at your desk and grinding away for 8 hours actually may not be all that great if you're just concerned about the bottom line about your work productivity," he added.

And although standing desks are popular, they may not be the answer.

"I'm not sure there's really solid scientific evidence that standing is really any better than sitting," Diaz said. "I worry that people have this false sense that they are healthy because they are using this desk, and maybe they're not actually that much better."

How to move more at work

What Diaz really wants people to take away from the research is that getting enough movement is achievable.

Moving doesn't have to mean leaving your desk if that's not in your workplace culture, said CNN fitness contributor Dana Santas, a mind-body coach for professional athletes.

The most recent research only looked at the effectiveness of walking, but Santas said there are other ways to move your muscles regularly.

"You can simply practice box squats by getting up and sitting back down gently then popping right back up again and repeating that motion over and over," Santas said via email.

If you do have the opportunity to get more space, Santas loves to recommend a dance break.

"Since most songs average at least 3 minutes, you can dance off the negative impact of too much sitting. And, as a bonus — dancing to your favorite tunes will also boost your mood!" she said.

For people with limited mobility or who use wheelchairs, there are still accessible ways to break up sedentary times.

Everyone should stretch out and move hands in all directions, Santas said. And someone in a wheelchair can do stretches, sidebends and twisting exercises from the chair, she added.

"Even when you can't move your lower body and actually get up from sitting, actively taking deep breaths that use your diaphragm and move your ribs, is beneficial for your posture and overall health," Santas said.

"The overall message is to move in as many ways that are possible based on your abilities," Buman said.

The bar for movement doesn't have to be high, Diaz added. "To the extent that you can break up your sitting with some kind of movement breaks, you're still going to yield some benefit," he said.

More people are surviving cancer. According to statistics released by the American Cancer Society, cancer mortality has dropped 33% since 1991. That's 3.8 million cancer deaths averted, the organization says.

In 2023, nearly 2 million new cancer cases are expected to be diagnosed and more than 609,820 cancer deaths are projected in the U.S.

The American Cancer Society says new cancer prevention methods and screenings are leading to better outcomes.

The organization touted the success of the HPV vaccine. It noted that there was a 65% reduction in cervical cancer rates in women ages 20-24 from 2012 through 2019.

“The large drop in cervical cancer incidence is extremely exciting because this is the first group of women to receive the HPV vaccine, and it probably foreshadows steep reductions in other HPV-associated cancers,” said Rebecca Siegel, lead author of the study.

The report, however, wasn't all good news. It showed prostate cancer increased by 3% from 2014 through 2019 after 20 years of decline. Additionally, the report details that the increase was driven by those diagnosed with advanced-stage prostate cancer.

"We must address these shifts in prostate cancer, especially in the Black community, since the incidence of prostate cancer in Black men is 70% higher than in White men and prostate cancer mortality rates in Black men are approximately two to four times higher than those in every other racial and ethnic group," said Dr. William Dahut, chief scientific officer at the American Cancer Society