A Man Got Cured of Sickle Cell This Week. A Toilet Gadget Started Scanning Poop. And I'm Over the KC Defenders.
Wellness Debrief 001.
Wellness, like so many things, sits on a continuum. This week’s health and wellness news bounces from curing a genetic blood disease to a toilet that photographs your poop for a subscription fee, with a case against a Love Island contestant built somewhere in the middle.
All this to say, The Wellness Debrief is back and on a new cadence. I’ll be popping up in your inboxes every Friday with my breakdown of what’s going on in the world of health and wellness right now.
Let’s get into this week, shall we?
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Saved Articles
Receipts! Proof! Timeline! Screenshots!
A Louisiana man was cured of sickle cell disease. Daniel Cressy was cured of sickle cell disease this month after finishing curative gene therapy. The process of doing this is stressful on the body and also a testament to modern science. Sickle cells were collected from Cressy’s body, then genetically modified using CRISPR technology, which repairs the mutation that causes cells to sickle. He was then treated with chemotherapy, and the modified cells were infused back into his blood. The newly modified cells will now produce healthy hemoglobin. Healthy Futures is happy for Daniel and is rooting for him to achieve his dreams of becoming a pilot!
Looksmaxxing has a new medium: peptides. This is another consequence of “doing your own research,” failing to address the body image concerns of young men, and failing to broadly identify looksmaxxing as a form of eugenics. It’s hard not to feel bad about young people falling victim to sociopolitical problems we could be addressing.
Speaking of maxxing, Dr. Miami (might have) botched Clavicular’s nose job. I know we shouldn’t be talking about this guy anymore—he is one looksmaxxer I don’t feel bad for; I explain why in this piece—but this is a crossover I’m interested in. No one will really know if the nose job was botched, since it takes six months to a year to properly heal, but two wellness villains linking up will always be a read for me.
Let that thang breathe while you sleep, honey. When I was a teenager, I got a yeast infection, and part of my treatment plan was to sleep commando. I’ve been a devotee to the cause ever since. So I was happy to see this article about the scientific benefits of sleeping without undies—including balancing pH, preventing microbial growth, and reducing moisture.
Lift heavy, girlfriend! I wrote about why lifting weights while on a GLP-1 is very, very important.
Trends I’m Judging
I was shocked, honey. I was in tears almost.
KC defenders. You may think the thousands of people online defending the actions of a reality show contestant isn’t a health and well-being issue, but I beg to differ!
Come with me as I build this RICO case.
Reality television has always been a reliable mirror for what’s happening in our society. We watch to see human nature stripped down to its rawest, most vulnerable elements. So when I see how KC is moving in the villa—especially post-Casa Amor—I see a real-world manifestation of red pill and manosphere ideology. Bullet pointing the examples for efficiency, otherwise we’ll be here all day:
KC called Aniya a “grandma” because she wasn’t overly physical with him. Mind you, they’ve known each other for three weeks. (And, I’d argue, that he just didn’t make her feel safe because she had no problem cozying up to Carl!)
He LAUGHED while she cried post-Casa recoupling.
He keeps mentioning that no one chose him on Night 1, which is very common on Love Island.
He moped around the villa until Casa, where he used the fawning he received as a way to assert his perceived “aura” since the OG girls didn’t “know his power.” After being pursued by Tierra and Sydney, he said his “stock was about to go up.”
He ensured that no matter what happened in Casa, he remained the one holding all the cards, entirely indifferent to the fact that Aniya was simultaneously turning down Carl to protect what she thought they had built.
The most telling evidence of manosphere influence to me, however, is the language KC has used. A core tenet of being red pilled is the belief that men are “high-value” alphas who should be chased and desired—preferably by multiple women. It isn’t just him, though; it’s pretty much all of the men on the island, with very few exceptions. I’m talking about him specifically versus, say, Sincere or Corbin, because we all seem to be in accord that Sincere is a pathological liar and Corbin is an asshole. With KC, however, the lines are murkier. And a section of the fan base has descended on Aniya, trying to make her, at best, at fault for the disrespect she received and, at worst, the real villain of the whole debacle. Another section is actively coddling KC.
Why is this a health and wellness trend to be wary of? When a fandom descends on a Black woman to vilify her for experiencing a completely normal human reaction to being blindsided, disrespected, and publicly humiliated, that is misogynoir. This actively erodes the psychological safety required for real-world intimacy and for women being able to exist safely. Misogynoir kills. Misogyny kills. It is that deep. It is that serious.
I could write a whole dissertation about this, and maybe I will one day. For now, just know: I see y’all, and I’m deeply disappointed.
Moving on.1
Poop Data Mining. Being a wellness lover means encountering some weird, obviously money-grabbing stuff. The latest in this lineage of items is Kohler Health’s Dekoda, a device that hangs on the side of your toilet, takes photos of your poop, and then uses AI to analyze it. In my eight years as a tried-and-true wellness consumer—and I mean I have tried nearly everything—this is one of the more ridiculous items I’ve come across. I agree that you should look at what comes out of you to make sure everything is the correct color and consistency, but you can use your eyes for that, babe. Hard pass. (lol).
Nicotine Pouches > Cigarettes??? The FDA has given Philip Morris the go-ahead to market Zyn nicotine pouches as being safer than cigarettes, even though nicotine is highly addictive, and it’s what makes cigarettes addictive. We’re seeing Big Tobacco evolve its marketing for a younger, more cigarette-adverse, biohacking-loving generation.
Industry Innovations
Can you believe it, girls?
The FDA approved a new sunscreen filter for the first time since the late 1990s…(Vox)
A smart period cup is coming…(FutureFemHealth)
Merck and Mae partner up to expand the doula workforce and fight maternal mortality…(Businesswire)
Clair Health raised $11.6M for a wrist-worn device that tracks women’s hormones without needles or urine tests…(Forbes)
SOND, a startup building an Oura ring for your ears, has raised $7M in funding…(TechCrunch)
That’s all for this week! Thanks for reading!
I am aware that he apologized and that they squashed their beef. Whoopdy do! It doesn’t change what I said.