HHS and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have released the 2025 to 2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which urge for more consumption of protein while avoiding highly processed foods.
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) “will revolutionize our nation’s food culture and make America healthy again,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during a press briefing. “The new guidelines recognize that whole nutrient-dense food is the most effective path to better health and lower health care costs.”
During the briefing, health officials unveiled a “New

The second season of the Emmy-award winning hospital drama “The Pitt” premieres Jan. 8 on HBO Max.
The series is a real-time chronicle of a 15-hour shift in the ED of a fictional Pittsburgh hospital, with each episode taking place over the course of 1 hour.
In a column written for Healio after “The Pitt” swept the Emmys for outstanding drama, lead actor and lead actress in September, Owais Durrani, DO, and Robert Glatter, MD, FACEP, FAAEM, praised the show for its “cultural recognition of a profession that has been running on fumes.”
In a new Q&A to mark the series’ return, Durrani and

DALLAS — Whole-person care has become a “practical necessity,” yet payment models reflect an era “built around episodic visits, fragmented services and narrow measures of success,” Padmaja Patel, MD, DipABLM, FACLM, CPE, said.
Patel, who is the president of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM), and other experts recently explored payment and policy barriers to implementing whole-person care and potential solutions during a panel discussion at ACLM’s annual conference.
Whole-person care stands on the six pillars of lifestyle medicine: nutrition, physical activity, restorative sleep,

Results showed anterior lumbar interbody fusion with posterior pedicle screw fixation may be effective and cost efficient and pose minimal complications within the immediate postoperative period when performed in an ASC.
“A growing volume of highly complex spine surgeries can now be performed safely and effectively in the outpatient setting,” Steven J. Girdler, MD, of DISC Sports & Spine Center in Newport Beach and Marina del Rey, California, told Healio. “This shift offers meaningful advantages for both patients and the broader health care system. Patients benefit from

The FDA granted breakthrough therapy designation to privosegtor, a novel peptoid small molecule for the treatment of optic neuritis, according to a press release from Oculis.
If approved, privosegtor would become the first neuroprotective therapy for optic neuropathies.
“We are excited to advance privosegtor in optic neuropathies to address the substantial unmet patient needs for neuroprotective therapies, with the potential to extend into retina and beyond,” Riad Sherif, MD, CEO of Oculis, told Healio.
The designation is supported by positive visual function results from the randomized,

Daily use of preservative-free artificial tears significantly reduced digital eye strain symptoms after 1 month but did not affect blink or eye fixation rates while performing visual tasks, according to a study in Scientific Reports.
“Artificial tears are the first approach for managing [dry eye disease],” Sara Ortiz-Toquero, PhD, of IOBA Eye Institute at University of Valladolid, Spain, and colleagues wrote. “Lubricants reduce surface friction during blinking, thereby improving dryness symptoms and lubricating the ocular surface, which helps alleviate discomfort.”

Emergency physicians cheered last September when “The Pitt” won five Emmy Awards, including for best drama.
They “felt seen and heard” when Noah Wyle, who won best actor in a drama for his portrayal of chief attending physician Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, dedicated his award to health care workers, according to Owais Durrani, DO, and Robert Glatter, MD, FACEP, FAAEM, who praised the show’s depiction of life in an ED in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as hospital staff weather the realities of “burnout, moral injury and mental health.”
The show’s Emmy wins “may not change policy overnight,

Editor’s note: This is a developing news story. Please check back soon for updates.
Alcon and STAAR Surgical terminated their definitive merger agreement.
According to a press release from STAAR, preliminary estimates showed that the company did not receive the necessary stockholder votes to approve the merger agreement during a special meeting of stockholders on Jan. 6.
“The board approved the Alcon agreement because we determined that it was in the best interests of STAAR stockholders,” Stephen Farrell, CEO of STAAR, said in the release. “We respect the outcome of the vote and look forward to

Light physical activity may improve mortality in people with cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic syndrome, especially people with later-stage disease, researchers reported.
A small increase from 1.5 to 2 hours of light physical activity per day may significantly improve mortality in this patient population, according to a study evaluating the link between light physical activity and all-cause death across stages of cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic (CKM) syndrome among U.S. adults published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
“While there have been some studies on the potential health

The prevalence of obesity was 75.2% among adults in the U.S. when new criteria proposed by The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology Commission was used to diagnose the disease, researchers reported in a JAMA Network Open research letter.
As Healio previously reported, a paper published by The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology Commission in January 2025 stated adults could be diagnosed with obesity if they had one measure of excess body fat plus a BMI that indicated obesity, two measures of excess body fat without using BMI, or by measuring body fat directly in a DXA scan. Using BMI, waist