The State of Wellness for August 2025
Fewer people are taking the pill, ChatGPT is making language dumber, ticks are all over the place, and no one can get a good night’s sleep.
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When I sat down to put together the inaugural State of Wellness post, I was struck by how contradictory the wellness landscape feels right now. One headline tells me fewer women are on the pill, another says that nearly $10 million worth of contraceptives are about to be destroyed by a presidential administration hostile to reproductive rights. I see stories about strokes rising and toddlers not needing extra protein right next to articles about billion-dollar breathwork industries.
I often wonder where, exactly, our attention should focus. Should we care more about the fact that proteinmania has led parents to feed their barely walking children protein shakes, a move that goes beyond the typical anxiety of a child refusing to eat nutritious foods? Or, should we stay fixed on what Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services, is doing to dismantle decades of leaps forward in public health?
If we stop doomscrolling and stop asking ChatGPT to think for us, we can pause to look around us as we walk and chew gum at the same time. Right now, the state of well-being is chaotic, messy, and very much enraging. Much of it is fueled by politics—and while I do think politics should play a beneficial role in expanding access to living a better life, it often doesn’t. Of course, we have to think about that, too.
Not every article included is gloomy, but I doubt any State of Wellness roundup will offer neat, feel-good explanations about what it means to be well in 2025. The point here is to be honest and clear, not to create content that makes us feel better—the Better Life Resources serves that purpose quite nicely. I can promise that, as a community, we’ll work to notice threads, connect the dots, and sit with the discomfort—and possibilities—of what health looks like right now.
Let’s get into it, shall we?
What Starvation Does to a Child’s Body (The Cut) — The manufactured famine in Gaza has killed at least 63 people, including children. I’m not someone who focuses only on the deaths of children when a much larger, much more resourced and armed nation inflicts war on a smaller one, such as what Israel is doing to Palestine. Starving children is just as abhorrent as starving their caretakers. Leaving children without parents or family is in the same vein as a government bombing their schools. The destruction of not only human life, which this article explains at a cellular level, but also of a rich culture and nation of people, should make us all sick to our stomachs.
“I think it’s important to constantly remind people that this is manmade and it is preventable,” Anu Narayan, a senior nutrition adviser for UNICEF, told The Cut. “We can still do things right now to help these children.”
“I Felt It Coming”: How Black Women Can Prepare — Financially And Emotionally — For A Layoff (Essence) — Black women are being pushed out of the workforce at a concerning rate. More than 300,000 Black women are currently unemployed, and the number continues to rise. Indeed, as the article points out, this is a consequence of mass federal layoffs, slashes to DEI programs, and being displaced due to AI. As an out-of-work Black woman, the fear of not being able to pay the bills and navigating an oversaturated job market is very much real. I liked the advice this article offered people trying to figure out what’s next and keep themselves sane.
Fewer Women Are Using Birth Control Pills in the U.S. (Statista) — Pill use has dropped from 33% in 2022 to 29% in 2024. I firmly believe that this decline reflects two current social shifts—growing skepticism of hormonal birth control, founded and not, amplified by social media, and the rise of alignment with conservative values.
ChatGPT Is Changing the Words We Use in Conversation (Scientific American) — Deep Negro Spiritual Sigh. Okay, my irritation aside, this is a very interesting piece of research that reveals another level at which AI is affecting the human brain. Researchers analyzed podcasts for “GPT words” as part of their study. I was most intrigued to see some pretty significant spikes in usage of these words in educational podcasts. I was also confused by the uptick in “swift” in sports podcasts. That seemed weird considering. Overall, AI is creating a feedback loop where people mimic what’s mimicked by the AI. (It reminds me of the two people pointing at each other and saying “exactly” meme.)
As Trump Administration Plans to Burn Contraceptives, Europeans Are Alarmed (The New York Times) — Fewer women on the pill doesn’t mean the Trump administration should destroy nearly $10 million worth. These supplies could have prevented unintended pregnancies and maternal harm abroad; instead, they're being incinerated amid political retrenchment.
The FDA overhauled its COVID vaccine guidance. Here’s what it means for you (LA Times) — It’s about to get harder for some folks to get the COVID boosters this fall. By revoking the emergency use authorization, the vaccine becomes less accessible. This change could raise liability and insurance coverage concerns for younger people without any pre-existing conditions who still desire vaccination against the virus. They may also need to take the additional step of consulting with their doctors to get permission to receive the shot. In practice, doctors might do the cursory appointment and sign off anyway. But that’s not always guaranteed, and I worry most about people who don’t have access to a physician—whether that be because they don’t have insurance or maybe they’re unhoused—to have the discussion.
New Initiative Creates First-Ever National Safety Net For Infant Feeding Following a Maternal Loss (EIN Presswire) — Woo! Some good news. Kimberly Seals Allers, founder of the IRTH app, is partnering with the Human Milk Banking Association of North America to launch The Restoration Project. The goal is to provide babies who lost their mothers from childbirth-related causes with access to at least seven days' worth of breast milk from a milk bank.
The Billion Dollar Breathe In, Breathe Out Routine (Statista) — Brokers are selling your health data to the highest bidder. From the article:
Out of the 34 companies contacted by the author of the study, ten were ready to sell exhaustive lists with details on the app customers' "depression, attention disorder, insomnia, anxiety, ADHD, treatments (medication for ADHD/ADD), antidepressants, and bipolar disorder" status. While the relationship between the app providers and data brokers provides a regular, largely incontestable revenue stream for both sides due to policy and legal loopholes on the collection of user data, telehealth apps have become a major revenue potential in their own right.
Spooky!
The terrifying reality behind one of America’s fastest-growing dairy brands (Vox) — Fairlife might be the most popular lactose-free milk company on the market. Multiple Animal Recovery Mission investigations since 2019 have revealed systemic, brutal animal abuse at supplier farms, and evidence suggests Fairlife continued sourcing from implicated locations despite public disavowals. Incredibly disappointing to see other living, breathing things treated this way.
Your Toddler Probably Doesn’t Need Extra Protein (The Cut) — Giving protein supplements to a small child is a bit concerning! Kids only need 13 grams of protein a day. They aren’t bodybuilders or gym bros.
‘All the Hot Girls Are Quitting Nic’ (The Cut) — More good news! I’m a former cigarette smoker, and quitting was the best thing I could have done for myself. Nicotine is super addictive and pretty harmful to the body. As Neal Benowitz, an emeritus medical professor at the University of California, San Francisco, told me a few years ago: “Nicotine works because it mimics the effects of acetylcholine, which is the body’s natural and most prevalent neurotransmitter that conducts information from one cell to the next.”
Let’s get a bit in the weeds for a second. In the brain, nicotine works primarily to release other neurotransmitters—like dopamine (pleasure), norepinephrine (arousal and appetite suppression), glutamate (learning and memory), endogenous opiates, and serotonin (mood modulation). And when an addiction is linked to something else that provokes enjoyment—like a cup of coffee or a really cute vape—it’s more reinforcing.
Strokes are on the rise—and these are the reasons why (National Geographic) — More people are having strokes and those strokes are happening younger due to higher rates of obesity, climate change making it hotter outside, and, not surprisingly, high blood pressure. A study in the Lancet estimated that half of the people with HBP don’t even know they have it.
Even though people are surviving after strokes due to advances in medicine, strokes and your health ain’t nothing to play around with. If you don’t have a primary care doctor, you can check your blood pressure at a pharmacy or a grocery store with a blood pressure machine. In some cities, like D.C., you can walk into a fire station and ask to have your BP taken. You can also purchase a cuff to use at home for less than $30 online. Once you know your BP stage, you can seek medical care if needed.
Matching your workouts to your personality could make exercise more enjoyable and give better results (CNN)
You lift bro? How America became a nation of exercise obsessives (Explain It To Me)
Should You Train To Failure? What To Know About The Workout Technique—And Who Should Try It (Women’s Health)
‘Ticks EVERYWHERE?’: Sightings and bites in the D.C. region heighten worries (The Washington Post)
Insomnia has become a public-health emergency (The Atlantic)
That’s all for this month! See ya in September.
— Julia