Justin Timberlake Lyme disease: Singer opens up on health struggles; fans ask, ‘Is there a cure?'
'I've been battling some health issues, and was diagnosed with Lyme disease -— which I don't say so you feel bad for me –– but to shed some light on what I've been up against behind the scenes,' the 44-year-old wrote on Instagram.
The pop star attached photos from his tour. "As I'm reflecting on the tour and festival tour — I want to tell you a little bit about what's going on with me.'
'If you've experienced this disease or know someone who has — then you're aware: living with this can be relentlessly debilitating, both mentally and physically. When I first got the diagnosis I was shocked for sure. But, at least I could understand why I would be onstage and in a massive amount of nerve pain or, just feeling crazy fatigue or sickness. I was faced with a personal decision. Stop touring? Or, keep going and figure it out. I decided the joy that performing brings me far outweighs the fleeting stress my body was feeling. I'm so glad I kept going," he further added.
Timberlake's announcement has worried fans. One of them asked on X: 'Is there a cure for Lyme disease?'
What is Lyme disease?
According to the Mayo Clinic, Lyme disease is caused by borrelia bacteria, which is carried by some ticks. Symptoms include rashes, body pain and stiffness, muscle weakness and immune-system issues.
Can Lyme disease be cured?
As per Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 'most cases of Lyme disease can be treated with 10-14 days of antibiotics'.
'People treated with appropriate antibiotics in the early stages of Lyme disease usually recover rapidly and completely.'
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NDTV
27 minutes ago
- NDTV
"So Much Pressure": World Nearly Beat Polio But Missteps Aided Its Comeback
Karachi: For the past decade, Sughra Ayaz has traveled door to door in southeastern Pakistan, pleading with parents to allow children to be vaccinated against polio as part of a global campaign to wipe out the paralytic disease. She hears their demands and fears. Some are practical - families need basics like food and water more than vaccines. Others are simply unfounded - the oral doses are meant to sterilize their kids. Amid rampant misinformation and immense pressure for the campaign to succeed, Ayaz said, some managers have instructed workers to falsely mark children as immunized. And the vaccines, which must be kept cold, aren't always stored correctly, she added. "In many places, our work is not done with honesty," Ayaz said. The World Health Organization and partners embarked on their polio campaign in 1988 with the bold goal of eradication - a feat seen only once for human diseases, with smallpox in 1980. They came close several times, including in 2021, when just five cases of the natural virus were reported in Pakistanand Afghanistan. But since then, cases rebounded, hitting 99 last year, and officials have missed at least six self-imposed eradication deadlines. Afghanistan and Pakistan remain the only countries where transmission of polio - which is highly infectious, affects mainly children under 5, and can cause irreversible paralysis within hours -- has never been interrupted. The worldwide campaign has focused most of its attention and funding there for the past decade. But in its quest to eliminate the disease, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative has been derailed by mismanagement and what insiders describe as blind allegiance to an outdated strategy and a problematic oral vaccine, according to workers, polio experts and internal materials obtained by The Associated Press. Officials have falsified vaccination records, selected unqualified people to dole out drops, failed to send out teams during mass campaigns, and dismissed concerns about the oral vaccinesparking outbreaks, according to documents shared with AP by staffers from GPEI - one of the largest and most expensive public health campaigns in history, with over $20 billion spent and nearly every country in the world involved. In Afghanistan and Pakistan - which share a border, harbor widespread mistrust of vaccines, and have weakened healthcare systems and infrastructure - local staffers like Ayaz have for years flagged problems to senior managers. But those issues, along with concerns by staffers and outside health officials, have long gone unaddressed, insiders say. Officials tout the successes - 3 billion children vaccinated, an estimated 20 million people who would have been paralyzed spared - while acknowledging challenges in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Remote villages are hard to reach, some cultural and religious authorities instruct against vaccination, and hundreds of polio workers and security staff have been killed because of their alignment with a Western-led initiative. Dr. Jamal Ahmed, WHO's polio director, defended progress in those two countries, citing workers' tailored response in resistant pockets. "There's so many children being protected today because of the work that was done over the past 40 years," he said. "Let's not overdramatize the challenges, because that leads to children getting paralyzed." Ahmed said he believes authorities will end the spread of polio in the next 12 to 18 months. Its latest goal for eradication is 2029. The campaign says about 45 million children in Pakistan and 11 million in Afghanistan must be vaccinated this year. Children typically need four doses of two drops each to be considered fully immunized. Dr. Zulfiqar Bhutta, who has served on advisory groups for WHO, the Gates Foundation and others, said campaign officials should listen to the criticism of its tactics. "Continuing blindly with the same strategies that we have relied on since eradication began is unlikely to lead to a different result," he said. Internal WHO reports reviewing vaccination drives in Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past decade - given to AP by current and former staffers - show that as early as 2017, local workers were alerting significant problems to senior managers. The documents flagged multiple cases of falsified vaccination records, health workers being replaced by untrained relatives and workers improperly administering vaccines. On numerous occasions, WHO officials noted, "vaccinators did not know about vaccine management," citing failure to keep doses properly cold. They also found sloppy or falsified reporting, with workers noting "more used vaccine vials than were actually supplied." According to an August 2017 report from Kandahar, Afghanistan, local government authorities and others interfered in choosing vaccinators, "resulting in the selection of underage and illiterate volunteers." Vaccination teams worked "in a hurried manner," reports said, with "no plan for monitoring or supervision." A team in Nawzad, Afghanistan, covered just half of the intended area in 2017, with 250 households missed entirely. Village elders said no one visited for at least two years. Vaccine workers and health officials in Afghanistan and Pakistan confirmed the issues in the documents and told AP it's hard for campaign leadership to grasp the difficulties in the field. Door-to-door efforts are stymied by cultural barriers, unfounded stories about vaccines, and the region's poverty and transience. "Most of the time when we go to vaccinate and knock on the door, the head of the house or the man is not at home," said one worker, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk to the press. "Many people find it offensive that a stranger knocks on the door and talks to a woman." Some workers find families have moved. Occasionally, they say, the encounter abuse. "We have shared these problems with our senior officials," the worker told AP. "They know about it." In an email response to AP's questions about officials' knowledge of the issues, WHO polio director Ahmed noted "operational challenges" in Afghanistan and Pakistan and said the program has "robust monitoring and evaluation processes." Worker Ayaz described "fake finger marking" - placing the ink used to show a child is vaccinated on their pinky even when no vaccine has been given. "There is so much pressure," Ayaz said. Before the first polio vaccine was developed in 1955, the disease - spread mostly from person to person, through contaminated water and via fecal particles - was among the world's most feared, paralyzing hundreds of thousands of children annually. People avoided crowded places during epidemics, and hospital wards filled with children encased in iron lungs after the virus immobilized their breathing muscles. Polio is mainly spread when people are exposed to water infected with the virus. In countries with poor sanitation, children often become infected when they come into contact with contaminated waste. WHO says that as long as a single child remains infected, kids everywhere are at risk. Eradication demands near-perfection - zero polio cases and immunizing more than 95% of children. But public health leaders and former WHO staffers say campaign efforts are far from perfect, and many question the oral vaccine. The oral vaccine - proven to be safe and effective - has been given to more than 3 billion children. But there are some extremely rare side effects: Scientists estimate that for every 2.7 million first doses given, one child will be paralyzed by the live polio virus in the vaccine. In even rarer instances, the live virus can mutate into a form capable of starting new outbreaks among unimmunized people where vaccination rates are low. Worldwide, several hundred vaccine-derived cases have been reported annually since at least 2021, with at least 98 this year. Most public health experts agree the oral vaccine should be pulled as soon as possible. But they acknowledge there simply isn't enough injectable vaccine - which uses no live virus and doesn't come with the risks of the oral vaccine - to wipe out polio alone. The injectable vaccine also is more expensive and requires more training to administer. More than two dozen current and former senior polio officials told AP the agencies involved haven't been willing to even consider revising their strategy to account for some of the campaign's problems. Dr. Tom Frieden, a former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who sits on an independent board reviewing polio eradication, said it would be impossible to eliminate polio without the oral vaccine. But he's urged authorities to find ways to adapt, such as adopting new methods to identify polio cases more quickly. Since 2011, he and colleagues have issued regular reports about overall program failures. "There's no management," he said, citing a lack of accountability. Last year, former WHO scientist Dr. T. Jacob John twice emailed WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus calling for a "major course correction." John shared the emails with AP and said he's received no response. "WHO is persisting with polio control and creating polio with one hand and attempting to control it by the other," John wrote. In his response to AP, WHO polio director Ahmed said the oral vaccine is a "core pillar" of eradication strategy and that "almost every country that is polio-free today used (it) to achieve that milestone." "We need to step back and really care for the people," he said. "The only way we can do that in large parts of the world is with oral polio vaccine." Ahmed also pointed to the success WHO and partners had eliminating polio from India, once considered a nearly impossible task. In the four years before polio was wiped out there, health workers delivered about 1 billion doses of the oral vaccine to more than 170 million children. Today, nearly all of the world's polio cases -- mostly in Africa and the Middle East -- are mutated viruses from the oral vaccine, except for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Scott Barrett, a Columbia University professor, called for an inquiry into how things went so wrong - particularly with a failed effort in 2016, when authorities removed a strain from the oral vaccine. They miscalculated, leading to outbreaks in more than 40 countries that paralyzed more than 3,000 children, according to an expert report commissioned by WHO. Last year, a mutated virus traced to that effort paralyzed a baby in Gaza. "Unless you have a public inquiry where all the evidence comes out and WHO makes serious changes, it will be very hard to trust them," he said. With an annual budget of about $1 billion, the polio initiative is among the most expensive in all of public health. This year, the U.S. withdrew from WHO, and President Donald Trump has cut foreign aid. WHO officials have privately admitted that sustaining funding would be difficult without success. Some say the money would be better spent on other health needs. "We have spent more than $1 billion (in external polio funding) in the last five years in Pakistan alone, and it didn't buy us any progress," said Roland Sutter, who formerly led polio research at WHO. "If this was a private company, we would demand results." Villagers, too, have protested the cost, staging hundreds of boycotts of immunization campaigns since 2023. Instead of polio vaccines, they ask for medicine, food and electricity. In Karachi, locals told AP they didn't understand the government's fixation on polio and complained of other issues - dirty water, heroin addiction. Workers are accompanied by armed guards; Pakistani authorities say more than 200 workers and police assigned to protect them have been killed since the 1990s, mostly by militants. The campaign also is up against a wave of misinformation, including that the vaccine is made from pig urine or will make children reach puberty early. Some blame an anti-vaccine sentiment growing in the U.S. and other countries that have largely funded eradication efforts and say it's reaching even remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. In suburban southwest Pakistan, Saleem Khan, 58, said two grandchildren under 5 were vaccinated over his family's objections. "It results in disability," said Khan, without citing evidence for his belief. "They are vaccinated because officials reported our refusal to authorities and the police." Svea Closser, professor of international health at Johns Hopkins University, said Pakistan and Afghanistan were less resistant to immunization decades ago. Now, people are angry about the focus on polio and lack of help for diseases like measles or tuberculosis, she said, spurring conspiracy theories. "Polio eradication has created a monster," Closser said. It doesn't help, she added, that in this region, public trust in vaccine campaigns was undermined when the CIA organized a fake hepatitis drive in 2011 in an attempt to get DNA and confirm the presence of Osama bin Laden or his family. Workers see that continued mistrust every day. In a mountainous region of southeastern Afghanistan where most people survive by growing wheat and raising cows and chickens, a mother of five said she'd prefer that her children be vaccinated against polio, but her husband and other male relatives have instructed their families to reject it. They believe the false rumors that it will compromise their children's fertility. "If I allow it," the woman said, declining to be named over fears of family retribution, "I will be beaten and thrown out." (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
Mint
an hour ago
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Harvard gastroenterologist lists 8 everyday toxins you should ditch now
You may be eating clean and working out regularly, but if your kitchen is still holding on to certain everyday items, your health might be at risk without you even realising it. Dr Saurabh Sethi, a Harvard and Stanford-trained gastroenterologist and hepatologist, recently took to Instagram to share a list of eight common toxins we often ignore in our homes, especially in our kitchens. These culprits, according to Dr Sethi, can quietly disrupt gut health, hormones, metabolism, and even increase your risk of disease over time. Scratched Nonstick Cookware (Teflon/PTFE) If your nonstick pans are chipped or peeling, it's time to say goodbye. Dr Sethi warns that damaged Teflon can release toxic fumes and microplastics, especially when exposed to high heat. Swap for: Ceramic, stainless steel, or cast iron cookware. Artificial Sweeteners (Aspartame, Sucralose) Often marketed as 'diet-friendly,' these sweeteners may harm your gut bacteria, blood sugar balance, and appetite signals. Long-term use has also been linked to glucose intolerance. Swap for: Pure monk fruit, stevia, or real fruits for natural sweetness. Plastic Water Bottles—Especially in Heat Even BPA-free plastics can leach hormone-disrupting chemicals when exposed to warm temperatures. Swap for: Stainless steel or glass bottles that are safer and reusable. Ultra-Processed Packaged Foods Think snacks loaded with additives, seed oils, emulsifiers, and preservatives. These disrupt gut health, affect metabolism, and trigger inflammation. Rule of thumb: If the label has more than five ingredients you can't pronounce—skip it. Swap for: Whole foods with recognisable, minimal ingredients. Scented Candles and Air Fresheners These may make your home smell great, but they often contain phthalates and VOCs, linked to hormone imbalances and inflammation. Swap for: Beeswax candles, essential oil diffusers, or simply good ventilation. Deli Meats with Preservatives Cold cuts may be convenient, but those with nitrites and nitrates are associated with increased gut inflammation and even higher colorectal cancer risk. Swap for: Freshly cooked meats without added preservatives. Antibacterial Soaps with Triclosan Dr Sethi notes that these soaps can harm your skin barrier and gut microbiome by killing both good and bad bacteria. Swap for: Plain soap and water—they're just as effective without the side effects. Fragrance-Heavy Laundry Detergents and Dryer Sheets These everyday products can contain phthalates and synthetic chemicals that cling to your clothes—and then to your skin—affecting hormone balance and irritating sensitive systems. Swap for: Fragrance-free detergents or wool dryer balls with a few drops of essential oil. So next time you're clearing out your kitchen or shopping for groceries and home supplies, think beyond calories, and start reading labels, checking materials, and making mindful swaps.
NDTV
3 hours ago
- NDTV
Karnataka Minister Flags Danger Of Artificial Colours After Notice To Empire Restaurant
Karnataka's Health Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao has urged the public to remain vigilant about food safety and avoid being misled by visually appealing but potentially harmful dishes. Addressing the media on Monday, Rao highlighted the need for consumers to prioritise quality over appearance. This appeal comes especially in the wake of recent food safety concerns involving the use of banned synthetic colouring. The minister cited the recent testing of food samples from the Empire Group of Restaurants. Six items were deemed unsafe after testing since they were found to contain synthetic colouring. About The Food Safety Violations At Bengaluru's Empire Restaurant Empire, a famous restaurant chain in Bengaluru, made headlines when a lab report revealed that some of its food items were unsafe for human consumption. The results dated July 11 from the State Food Laboratory, Public Health Institute, pertained to chicken kebabs served at its Gandhinagar outlet. A food safety officer had collected two kilos of chicken kebab samples from the establishment on June 27. It was discovered that they did not meet the required food safety standards. After a notice was issued to the restaurant, Empire said that they stopped using food colouring in their kebabs. The restaurant later released a detailed public statement about the same. It clarified, "Recently, the FSSAI flagged the use of a synthetic colour (Sunset Yellow FCF) in our kebab marinade. While this colour is an FSSAI-licensed, commercially available product that has previously seen widespread use across the industry, we were served a notice and we fully complied. Its use has now been completely discontinued." The restaurant added, "We have now given our signature dishes a fresh, natural look-the same Empire taste and the same quality, with zero compromise." Read the complete statement below: View this post on Instagram A post shared by Hotel Empire (@hotelempire) Food Safety As A Public Responsibility During his media address, in which he referenced the above incident, Dinesh Gundu Rao also emphasised that ensuring food quality is a shared responsibility. He noted that better quality food and drugs can become the norm only if people insist on quality goods, as per PTI. "The government needs to do its part and tackle this legally, but people, too, should cultivate quality consciousness as culture," he said. As part of broader food safety initiatives, the minister said that the health department also held a virtual meeting with cooking oil manufacturers to enforce trans-fat limits. It was declared that oils exceeding the 2% trans-fat threshold would invite strong regulatory action.
