Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD

This week, Emily and Perry debate full body scans: MRIs that scan your entire body like a giant humming hammer in search of nails. Will it find something wrong with you? (Yes.) Will it be something you should be worried about? (Almost always no.) But what if that one time it's the one thing that ends up saving your life? (Yeah, this is actually kind of complicated.) Plus: a totally not shocking flu outbreak amongst our troops, fantastic news about the HPV vaccine and cervical cancer, and RIP blue and brown M&Ms. Submit a question for our weekly mailbag at wellnessactually.fm.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

GLP-1s. Colostrum. Microplastics. Red light therapy. Vaccines. There’s a staggering amount of health and wellness news and information, and it’s bombarding us everywhere we look. Who’s got time to parse it out, to verify it, and then to actually do the work of improving our health? And what if those wellness influencers actually knew how to read a medical study? That’s why we’re here. We are Emily Oster, best-selling author and data expert, and Perry Wilson, a medical doctor. And our goal is to separate fact from fiction, causality from correlation, so that you can stay informed without being overwhelmed. Every episode, we cover the health news of the week, take listener questions, and do a deep dive into a buzzy and misunderstood wellness topic so that you can actually make the best decisions for your own health. So join us for a weekly dose of sanity. It might actually be just what the doctor, and the economist, ordered: health advice for real life.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For many people, when we start thinking about a family, we assume it'll just happen nine months from the moment we start trying. But that isn't the way it happens for all of us. And fertility can often be a journey that's more winding and more complicated and more confusing than we expected it to be. That's why ParentData has launched a new content vertical, Trying to Conceive (TTC), covering everything from ovulation windows to donor eggs to infertility treatments, along with a newsletter all about infertility treatment in particular, which aims to answer all of your questions with data. It's our mission to provide real evidence-based information so you can make the best decisions for your family.Today on ParentData, we're airing the audio from an event Emily did with three of the people who have contributed most to our new initiative: Dr. Breonna Slocum, a reproductive endocrinologist and fertility specialist, Marea Goodman, a licensed midwife and author, and Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, a perinatal psychiatrist. This roundtable of experts discuss about where to start with fertility, answer audience questions in real time, and consider what they all wish that they knew before starting the journey of trying to conceive.Explore to Trying to Conceive on ParentData.org, where you can also access new articles every week on data-driven pregnancy and parenting.This episode is generously supported by: Hatch LMNT StrollerCoaster Podcast See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Shots are never a fun experience. Even if you are enthusiastic about vaccines, holding your kids as they get them is not usually a high point of parenting. And right now, the conversation about vaccines is increasingly fraught - and not just because our kids are sometimes afraid of needles.Because we're living in a moment where vaccines, long one of the most trusted and studied preventative medical treatments in existence, are suddenly being viewed with skepticism. Debunked theories about the relationship between vaccines and autism, for example, are taking center stage on Instagram and Facebook, but also in congressional hearings. Part of the problem is a lack of understanding. People don't know quite how vaccines work or why there are more now than in the past or how we can know that they are safe. Today on ParentData, we welcome Dr. Adam Davis. Adam is a pediatrician in the Bay Area, and he has a lot to say about vaccines from the perspective of someone who gives them. In the conversation, we talk about our theories on why the COVID vaccine sped up a slow-growing movement around vaccine skepticism, about the role that vaccines play in public health, about what it’s like for doctors to deal with vaccine skeptics in their own practice and what people can and can't be talked into or out of, and, because it’s a parenting podcast, some hacks for getting your kids through vaccines without too much drama.Subscribe to ParentData.org for free access to new articles every week on data-driven pregnancy and parenting.This episode is generously supported by: Hatch LMNT Little Sesame StrollerCoaster Podcast See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.