Health

The Port Everglades water distribution system supplies the cruise ships, Broward County Convention Center, and Harbor Shops (a plaza with a Publix, handful of eateries, and a gym for mothers and their babies). Now the Port is warning its users about their drinking water. The City of Fort Lauderdale once…

On a recent Thursday at 10:30 a.m., one mother holds a plank position as her pig-tailed toddler breastfeeds from the yoga mat beneath her. Five other mothers (some pregnant) exercise beside her. Vanilla Ice’s “Ice, Baby, Ice” blasts from the speakers. Five toddlers scurry around the gym, chasing each other…

Thirty bored students bask in the glow of aging computer monitors under the ever-present hum of fluorescent lights. Some scroll through articles on health and fitness and fill in bubbles on multiple choice quizzes. Others furtively scour the web for online flash games that haven’t yet been blocked by Dade…

Dahrnaz Tigner’s little sister, Jade, once weighed nearly 300 pounds. She was ill. He was ambitious. So to bring attention to childhood obesity,  the 27-year-old former high school athlete recently walked more than 1300 miles from his home in Pompano Beach to the White House. It took two months. “At…

After 14 cases of the Zika virus were believed to contracted in Wynwood, the CDC, Florida Department of Health and South Florida’s local governments raced to mist and fog likely mosquito breeding grounds with chemicals. They launched an awareness campaign about turning over flower pots and covering vacant pools to…

Four months after North Carolina lawmakers required transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender listed on their birth certificates, the City of West Palm Beach has announced that it will now make life a little easier for its transgender employees and their families. Now the city’s health insurance…

The average American women uses approximately 16,800 tampons in her lifetime. Most women know little of a tampon’s ingredients, even though anything touching the skin, especially on a regular basis, is absorbed into the bloodstream. It’s all because the FDA considers tampons and other menstrual hygiene items to be “medical…

In 2009, Los Angeles-based celebrity hair stylist Chaz Dean released Wen, a line of hair-care products that purportedly cleans and conditions without harsh sulfates to create a healthy, natural look. Actresses Alyssa Milano and Christina Applegate have touted the products on infomercials. So has Brooke Shields, who in one commercial…

On March 27, Ivanka Trump gave birth to presidential candidate Donald Trump’s eighth grandchild, Theodore James Kushner. After marrying husband Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump converted to Judaism. Donald Trump recently told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that his daughter had a “beautiful Jewish baby.” If the family sticks with…

When you meet someone new, you scan their features. If the eyes are narrow, brow prominent, and jaw square, you recognize the person as male. If the eyes are rounder, nose slimmer, and chin pointier, you register the person as a female. According to Dr. Vartan Madirossian, gender detection happens…

For two years, Rowzee Ryburn worked at a needle exchange program in Melbourne, Australia. She’d tally the inventory and provide clean syringes to anyone who came in. Then, two years ago, the 35-year-old moved to Lake Worth to be closer to friends. She currently works as a landscape artist, but…

Cynthia Muniz opened her pole dancing studio in 2010. Back then, pole dancing was still stigmatized as a stripper’s sport. But over the next six years, as pole dancing became recognized as a form of exercise, Muniz grew KittyKat Pole Dancing studio in Midtown, Miami as a gym (albeit one…

Julia Negron is cheering in her bed in Venice, on the west coast of Florida. She has her laptop propped on her bed watching the live stream of the Florida House vote on the Infectious Disease Elimination Act in Tallahassee. It would create the first needle exchange program in Florida…

In 1961, Dr. Jack Fishman applied for a patent on nalaxone, a powerful drug that he created during his part-time work at a New York pharmaceutical lab. The substance safely reverses overdoses for users of opioids such as heroin and prescription painkillers. Hospitals and emergency responders clamored to have it…

For the past three years, Dr. Hansel Tookes, a 34-year-old medical resident specializing in infectious diseases, has fought to bring a needle-exchange program to South Florida. With the spike in heroin use, a needle exchange is desperately needed here, Tookes says—especially since Miami-Dade and Broward counties have the highest rates…

Last week, Broward’s first case of the zika virus was reported, and Governor Rick Scott declared a public health emergency in the county. Zika is ripping its way through poor communities in Brazil, and is tied to birth defects — For about a week, that was believed to have been…

It’s the new year, and surely, you’ve got resolutions. If those involve weight loss or toning up, here are 15 places that will make it easy to reach your goal.  Know of other great gyms? Tell us in the comments! 15. Orange Theory This rapidly-growing fitness franchise started right here…

You can feel it, can’t you? That dull headache at the back of your scalp; the sinus pressure when the temperature drops down to the 70s one day, they bolts back into the 90s the next; the constant hacking you hear from across the office. The tail-end of the calendar…

Among the millions of people pouring into South Florida each year, there’s a large slice of health seekers, body conscious or ill individuals hoping the change in weather could do them some good. Depending on your beliefs — or desperation — West Palm Beach’s Hippocrates Health Institute is a popular…

Rather than trash the surplus of Butterfingers, Reese’s Cups and Laffy Taffy hauled into your house by lucrative trick-or-treaters, bring it to one of a dozen South Florida dentists and orthodontists who are offering kids incentives for trading it in. Some  dentists pay kids a $1 per pound for dumping…