Did you know that eating sugar-free chewing gum can help if you’re struggling with constipation?

Yep – doctors say the process “tricks your body into thinking it’s eating,” which helps to get things moving again.

Speaking of moving, chewing gum might have another purpose, too. Some research has found it could help to make our walks faster and more efficient.

A 2018 paper found that, compared to those who didn’t chew gum, people who tried the minty method while walking had higher heart rates, burned more energy, walked further, and strolled faster.

These results seemed especially strong among middle-aged and older people (men, in particular).

We don’t know exactly why chewing gum seemed to speed up people’s pace.

But the researchers wrote, “one possible mechanism is cardiac-locomotor synchronisation (CLS) or cardiac-locomotor coupling”.

CLS happens when a person’s heartbeat thumps in time with their steps, and vice versa. It’s a phenomenon which seems to be stronger in middle-aged and older people.

“Gum chewing increased the heart rate, and CLS possibly led to increases in the physical functions of walking distance and steps,” the study authors said.

A separate 2019 study found that people who chewed gum faster seemed to walk more quickly, too, “with increases or decreases in a person’s chewing rate leading to similar changes in their stepping rate (and hence walking speed)”.

They said that this change may happen as “the neural drive related to chewing entrains the muscles involved in the basic gait action of stepping”.

Yes. If you want to walk more quickly, swinging your arms seems to help, too.

Milica McDowell, a physical therapist and author of Walk: Rediscover the Most Natural Way to Boost Your Health and Longevity – One Step at a Time, told TIME that the movement turns your torso, bringing the rest of the body along with it.

“The arms are sort of like the conductor – they lead the rest of the coordination,” she said.

This week you might have seen a heartbreaking story being shared, in which a leading medical expert warned that three toddler deaths in the past two years in Australia had been linked to excessive cow’s milk consumption.

The young children had developed infections, but also had extreme iron deficiency anaemia, where a lack of iron in the body leads to a reduced number of red blood cells – the condition had been linked to them drinking too much cow’s milk.

Dr Sally Campbell, a haematologist at Queensland Children’s Hospital (QCH) told ABC: “They were drinking more than one litre of cow’s milk per day. This resulted in them developing extreme iron deficiency anaemia and, sadly, dying.

“They had a virus or something else that tipped them over the edge, but the cause of their severe iron deficiency anaemia was from excess cow’s milk.”

She added that a virus can be “life-threatening when you’ve got a chronic anaemic state” as “the ability of your body to cope, when you have a quarter of the amount of red blood cells that you should have, deteriorates”.

Similar cases have occurred in the UK, too. Reports suggest Anaya Khaanan, who was almost two, died after developing severe anaemia caused by a predominantly milk-based diet.

It’s certainly an issue doctors are seeing – albeit a rare one.

Dr Arindam Das, a paediatrician verified on the healthcare review platform Doctify, told HuffPost UK he recently helped a toddler with a significant nutritional complication associated with excessive milk consumption.

The child experienced swelling, rather than the more typical symptoms like tiredness or pallor that are usually associated with anaemia. Dr Das said they had “severe iron deficiency anaemia together with a low blood albumin level in the context of excessive milk consumption”.

“This is a recognised but relatively unusual complication,” he added.

It’s understandable that you might have been left worried about how much milk your child is consuming, and whether they’re getting the right nutrients more broadly, but Dr Asiya Maula, private GP at The Health Suite, said “parents should not conclude that cow’s milk itself is dangerous”.

The issue is when cow’s milk is drunk in excess, replacing meals and crucial nutrients.

“From the age of one, it is a valuable source of protein, calcium and vitamin A,” Dr Maula told HuffPost UK. “The concern is when a toddler drinks so much that it repeatedly replaces meals and iron-rich foods.

“Cow’s milk contains very little iron and is extremely filling. A child who fills up on milk may have little appetite left for foods such as meat, fish, eggs, beans, lentils, green vegetables and fortified cereals.

“Over time, that can leave them short of the iron needed to produce healthy red blood cells.”

A Perth-based study of 10,000 women and their babies found that, by age three, more than 56% of children had low iron, with almost 20% having very low iron and 2.6% suffering with severe iron deficiency anaemia.

In the UK, severe cases are uncommon, Dr Das said, but they can be “significant”.

Babies under 12 months should not have cow’s milk as their main drink, said Dr Maula.

“Breast milk or suitable infant formula should remain their main milk source, although cow’s milk can be used in cooking from around six months,” she explained.

“From the age of one, NHS advice is to offer around 350ml of milk a day, or roughly two portions of dairy foods such as yoghurt and cheese.

“If a toddler is routinely drinking well over 500ml of cow’s milk a day, particularly instead of meals, it is worth discussing this with a health visitor, GP or dietitian,” added the GP.

Iron deficiency can, initially, be quite subtle. “Parents might notice their child becoming unusually pale, tired, irritable or lacking in energy,” said Dr Das.

“They may have a poorer appetite or be less interested in their usual activities.”

When anaemia becomes more significant, it can start to cause breathlessness, a fast heartbeat, difficulties with concentrating, poor growth or unusual cravings for non-food substances, he added.

And, in the case of the toddler he recently treated, “although it is much less common, new unexplained swelling around the eyes, feet or abdomen should always prompt medical assessment, rather than simply being assumed to be dietary”.

As iron supports normal immune function, severe iron deficiency anaemia can leave a child less resilient when illness strikes. Dr Maula notes recurrent infections have many possible causes and do not automatically mean iron deficiency – but it’s certainly worth getting checked out.

First of all, don’t panic – and there’s no need to suddenly eliminate cow’s milk either, the doctors stressed.

“For most children over one, milk is a healthy and useful part of their diet,” said Dr Das. “If a toddler is drinking excessive amounts, I would gradually reduce this and offer milk at defined times, such as with meals, rather than allowing them to continually fill up on it.”

If your child is thirsty between meals, water is the best drink to offer them. Dr Maula also advised moving away from using baby bottles, where age-appropriate.

Offer plenty of iron-rich foods throughout the week. The NHS lists red meat, beans (ie. chickpeas and kidney beans), nuts, dried fruit, fortified cereals and soy bean flour as being good sources of iron.

Dr Maula recommended combining plant-based sources such as beans, lentils or fortified cereals with vitamin C-rich foods, which help the body absorb iron.

She warned against offering iron supplements without medical advice, as too much can be harmful, and added: “If there are symptoms, feeding concerns or a very restricted diet, speak to a GP, who can arrange a blood test if appropriate.”

Urgent help should be sought if a child is unusually drowsy, very breathless, collapses, has blue or grey lips or appears acutely unwell.

Dr Das concluded: “The message I would give parents is: milk is good, but more milk is not necessarily better. It should complement a varied diet, not replace it.”

Ryan Murphy’s new series The Shards brings Bret Easton Ellis’ semi-autobiographical thriller to life in a new, seductive drama.

The show is set at a 1980s elite Los Angeles prep school and follows a fictionalised version of the author in his younger years.

His cliquey, privileged high school social group is thrown into turmoil when a mysterious new student arrives at the same time that a serial killer known as The Trawler starts to stalk his beloved city.

True to form for a Ryan Murphy production, the cast is made up of regular collaborators, rising stars and nepo babies.

For those who are already hooked on The Shards, here’s where you’ve seen the cast before…

Igby takes the lead as author Bret Easton Ellis, in this adaptation of his 2023 semi-fictional novel.

Before being cast in The Shards, the actor was best known for appearing in Mike Flanagan’s spooky Netflix shows, having starred as altar boy Warren Flynn in Midnight Mass, leukaemia patient Kevin in The Midnight Club and Camile’s assistant Toby in The Fall Of The House Of Usher.

His other credits include playing Kevin in the comedy The Sex Lives Of College Girls, Dr. Scott Marcus in Grey’s Anatomy and a friend of one of the survivors in Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy.

Kaia Gerber is one of the aforementioned nepo babies involved in The Shards. While once known as simply the daughter of supermodel Cindy Crawford, Kaia is now a star in her own right.

As an actor, Kaia has appeared in the films Bottoms with Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott and Outcome with Keanu Reeves and Cameron Diaz, as well as Mother Mary alongside Anne Hathaway earlier this year.

On TV, she has a recurring role in the Apple TV+ comedy Palm Royale as optimistic manicurist Mitzi, appeared in the comedy Overcompensating as campus queen bee and played herself in Hacks.

The Shards is not her first Ryan Murphy project, either.

Kaia previously played the bloodthirsty ghost Ruby in 2021’s American Horror Stories and pre-med student Kendall in American Horror Story: Double Feature.

Since Kaia shares more than a resemblance to her gorgeous supermodel mother, she has also modelled in print and on the runway for the likes of Versace, Calvin Klein and Jimmy Choo.

As the surname indicates, Homer is the son of Pretty Woman star Richard Gere and his second wife, Licence To Kill actor Carey Lowell.

Richard was previously married to Cindy Crawford in the early 1990s, so audiences are loving watching the two A-listers’ kids sharing the screen together over 30 on.

The Shards marks Homer’s first leading role, although he did have a small part in the third series of Euphoria.

He appeared in the Zendaya-led show as Dylan Reid, the fictional heartthrob who stars in L.A. Nights, and later becomes romantically linked to Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie.

Evan Rachel Wood is a Golden Globe nominee who has consistently been working in Hollywood since the age of nine.

As a kid, she starred in Practical Magic with Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock, before her breakout in 2003’s teen drama Thirteen.

Best known for her work in indie cinema, Evan’s film credits include the Ryan Murphy-directed Running With Scissors, The Beatles musical Across The Universe and the Oscar-nominated The Wrestler.

Her most high-profile TV gigs include playing vampiric Sophie-Anne Leclerq in True Blood and android host Delores across all four seasons of Westworld.

Evan has also appeared in numerous music videos, most famously Green Day’s Wake Me Up When September Ends alongside her ex-husband Jamie Bell.

Wes Bentley is best known for his Bafta-nominated role as the plastic bag-watching Ricky in American Beauty, as well as playing Head Gamemaker Seneca Crane in The Hunger Games and, more recently, lawyer Jamie Dutton in Yellowstone.

He has also had roles as Legion in Ghost Rider, geographer Doyle in Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi Interstellar and Julia’s now-husband Erik in Mission: Impossible – Fallout.

Wes frequently works with Ryan Murphy and has guest-starred in three seasons of American Horror Story. He appeared in Freakshow as the man with two faces, Edward Mordrake, in Hotel as Detective John Lowe and in Roanoke as actor Dylan Conrad.

You may recognise Owen Painter for playing Pugsey’s pet zombie Slurp, who is secretly the brilliant former Nevermore student, Isaac Night, in the Netflix series Wednesday. You may also know him for his work in the fifth season of The Handmaid’s Tale as Jaden, a young Guardian serving in a Gileadean border region to Canada.

Owen also had a recurring role in the comedy-drama Tiny Beautiful Things, as a younger version of Nick Stahl’s character, Lucas.

The Shards marks a rare acting role for Jordan Roth, who is primarily known as a seven-time Tony Award-winning theatre producer who has worked on shows like Hadestown, Moulin Rouge!, Kinky Boots, and Angels in America.

However, his previous acting work has included playing himself in the TV musical series Smash, as well as appearing as a Broadway correspondent for various TV news and print outlets.

An avid art and fashion collector, Jordan has also walked the runway for the likes of Thom Browne and has appeared in Vogue and L’Officiel.

The Shards marks the first acting role for pop star Hayes Warner.

Hayes’ career gained momentum in 2024 when her brutally-honest revenge song Breadcrumbs went viral on TikTok.

Since then, her other pop-rock hits have included Predator, Oh! and Ziz, and she has racked up 50,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and over a million views on YouTube.

Although The Shards is Daniel Dale’s most high-profile role to date, he may well be a recognisable face to fans of several Apple TV+ dramas.

He starred in the first series of Your Friends & Neighbours as Tori’s boyfriend Dale, and in Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed as camboy Sky.

Before landing those Apple TV+ dramas, Daniel had minor roles in The Good Wife spin-off Elsbeth and the forgotten Kyle Mooney horror-comedy Y2K, which also starred Rachel Zegler and Jaeden Martell.

The Shards marks the second time Gus has worked on a Ryan Murphy project this year after a guest appearance in The Beauty.

Gus found fame when he portrayed convicted murderer Erik Menendez in the miniseries Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders (a separate project to Ryan Murphy’s own controversial Netflix miniseries Monster, which focused on the Menendez brothers).

On the big screen, he has had minor roles in the action thriller Cold Pursuit starring Liam Neeson, the Paul Feig-produced Holler and the biopic Rustin, for which Colman Domingo earned an Oscar nomination for his work as the civil rights activist Bayard Rustin.

Comedian and actor Ivy Wolk became known during the pandemic for her provocative online content, which frequently ruffled feathers.

After making a name for herself online, her first notable on-screen role came in 2022, when she was cast in the Judd Apatow comedy The Bubble. She followed this with roles in Tim Robinson’s comedy Friendship, the motherhood drama If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and Anora, which won five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Mikey Madison.

As for her TV work she appeared in the Disney+ comedy English Teacher as a sardonic student, and in crime comedy Deli Boys as the kidnapped daughter of a casino boss.

The Shards is currently streaming on Disney+ with new episodes dropping weekly

Grease star Stockard Channing has opened up about what she has described as her “reclusive” life in London.

The 82-year-old actor recently wrote an essay for the Sunday Times, in which she spoke about what spurred her move across the pond.

“Since just before Covid I’ve been living in London,” Stockard explained. “My partner, Daniel [Gillham], died in 2014 and it was more devastating than I realised; it had a lag effect.

“The pattern of my life shifted, so I shifted my life from Maine.”

“I’ve lived alone since I lost Daniel and I’m happy being a recluse,” she continued. “I was married four times before Daniel and they all represent epochs of me.”

“Children were thought about and, yeah, I think about them now because it’d be great to have someone taking care of me,” she added. “But, hey, children can be just as selfish as everybody else out there.”

Stockard was married four times before ending up with Daniel Gillham, who was a cinematographer. Her previous husbands were Walter Channing Jr., Paul Schmidt, David Debin and David Rawle.

The Oscar nominee and her late partner never married, something she attributed to her previous relationships.

“What have I learned from my divorces? I know that nobody gets married to get divorced. I don’t think I’ll get married another time,” Stockard wrote in an essay for The Guardian in 2006.

“I’ve been living with my partner [cinematographer Daniel Gillham] for over 20 years, so… It would feel quite silly, actually.”

I clutched my pregnant belly and looked around the room. Nearby, nursing students moved briskly through a crowd of emergency patients, checking vitals, calling out to each other. I knew I wasn’t their most urgent triage priority, certainly not compared to the bleeding patients on gurneys around me moaning, “Help me … can someone please help me?”

“We’ve called OB/GYN, and they’ll be here as soon as they can,” a young nursing student promised me.

I closed my eyes and sighed. Help was on the way.

At some point – I couldn’t tell you exactly when – my hand stopped seeking out my baby bump for reassurance, and located something else instead. It was small and square and adhered discreetly to my skin beneath my maternity shirt: an oestrogen patch, oozing a steady dose of this miraculous hormone into my bloodstream.

Because I wasn’t pregnant – I was pretty much the exact opposite. I was in the relentless grip of menopause, and I was playing a pregnant woman as part of a disaster simulation at a nursing school. The bloody patients calling out for help? They were mannequins, and their pleas were being remotely broadcast through microphones from a nearby control room. My baby bump? A prosthetic that had been velcroed in place.

“Thanks everyone,” one of the managers in charge of the set called out, causing a few of us to break character with nervous laughter.

I did need help – that part of this scenario was entirely true. Most urgently, I needed financial help. So this simulation was one of many part-time jobs I’d taken on after severe menopausal symptoms had, at least in part, driven me to quit my full-time job as a medical writer months before.

The $160 estrogen patch had been on a national shortage. I had called around to several pharmacies before I was lucky enough to score one, out of pocket. The last time I felt this desperate for something this scarce was in fifth grade, when I competed with every other kid in my class for a Cabbage Patch Kid. Now, apparently, we had grown up and aged into hormone patch kids.

To understand how I ended up here – menopausal, underemployed and incubating a pretend baby – you’d have to go back a few years, to a time when we were still wiping down our groceries and wondering if it was safe to touch the mail.

The truth was, the pandemic had spoiled me.

I am not going to say I enjoyed the pandemic, although I know I wasn’t the only one who guiltily noticed certain silver linings (serial plan cancellers and Zoom stockholders, I’m looking at you!).

However, for me and the other women going through what my mother once quaintly called “the change of life”, the pandemic had, if you’ll forgive the expression, masked our pain.

In my case, the menopausal symptoms snuck up so stealthily I didn’t realise what they were at first. Because I had never carried a baby or birthed a child, I felt no particular grief around my uterus being closed for business. And as a person whose knowledge of menopause had been mostly limited to cringy jokes about hot flashes, I was wildly unprepared for the range of symptoms it could cause. Itchy skin? Joint pain? Heart palpitations? Worsening of ADHD? Really?

Meanwhile, the pandemic had basically put the whole world on pause, providing a work-life ratio that for me, for once, tipped towards life. Not only were we allowed to bring our laptops out into the fresh air while identifying white-breasted nuthatches, we were practically required to.

It shouldn’t have taken a devastating viral outbreak for it to happen, but for women like me, many of whom were also navigating the difficult realities of nest-leaving children and ageing parents, the pandemic offered a slow-paced, surprisingly gentle sanctuary in which to endure the hormonal crash-and-burn.

However, when the N95 masks eventually came off and companies began to wrench employees back into the daily grind, I found myself unable to change out of a gardening apron and back into a suit jacket.

I tried to make it work, but my company abruptly switched me from the job I’d had for years – one I knew well and felt confident doing – to a new position in which I felt completely out of my depth. It was yet another major “change of life”, and for me, two of those were one too many.

Where once my job had consisted of writing long-form feature stories – work that played to my strengths – I was now tasked with summarising highly technical scientific manuscripts about gastroenterology.

The job also required me to promote these stories by crafting social media posts featuring a carefully curated selection of emojis. Between interpreting Ph.D.-level content about gut microbiota alterations and making sure I had pasted in at least two poop emojis, I had to vacillate daily between the functional intelligence of a postdoctoral researcher and a sugar-overdosed toddler.

And I was already vacillating plenty on my own. I was experiencing what I would only later realise were the hallmark signs of severe menopause: brain fog, debilitating insomnia, memory issues and anxiety. Oh, the anxiety! I’d always been sensitive to criticism, but now the very sight of red strikethrough in my articles was enough to make me cry, which, for a professional writer, is a bit like a surgeon fainting at the sight of blood.

What I didn’t do (what never even occurred to me to do) was tell anyone at work what was happening. I’m a Gen X woman. There are lots of great things about Gen X women, but the way we tend to quash our feelings in the name of being “chill” or “low-maintenance” is not one of them.

We were raised to act tough, swallow our pain, and wash it down with water from the backyard hose. So I “hung in there” like that infamous motivational-poster kitten and said nothing. What would I even have said? When it came to understanding what was going on with me at the time, I was probably more clueless than anyone else.

I will never forget the day I realised I wasn’t going to be able to keep hanging in there. I had taken a much-anticipated day off and was preparing for a relaxing trip to the beach. All of a sudden, ping! – a notification from my boss landed in my work inbox. It was flagging one of my social media posts for various keyword- and emoji-based offenses. He had copied our entire team.

And here’s the thing: he wasn’t wrong. I was struggling, legitimately, and it was showing up in my work. From my employers’ perspective, I was simply an employee adjusting poorly to a minor workplace shake-up. From where I sat, though, I was a hormonally imbalanced mess who was having a very private midlife meltdown in full view of my peers.

I’d like to say I was able to brush it off and enjoy my day at the beach. Maybe a former version of me could have. However, this version of me could not.

“Wish you were here!” The souvenir shop postcards declared, and I felt directly called out, because in a very real way, I was not there.

I’m going to quit this job, I told myself, the words coming to me as if spelled out in the summer sky like an aerial banner for all-you-can-eat clams. Maybe not today, but soon.

And not long after that, I did.

I had no real plan, other than a couple of freelance clients, a sparse 401k, and a vague, possibly delusional conviction that bold moves pay off.

The move did not pay off – at least not right away. I forced myself to go for long walks to cheer myself up, only to come home crying. I made cautious forays onto LinkedIn, where any promising job posting had already been picked to the bone, and where any actionable information about which blurry-faced potential employer had viewed my profile would cost me $29.99 a month.

Then one night, half-watching Jeopardy!, I learned that standardised patients – people trained to simulate medical conditions for student clinicians – were a thing. I looked it up, found a help wanted ad, and applied.

There was something about this work that appealed to me in a way that was vaguely embarrassing. Sure, it provided money, but it was more than that. Someone in the room would be tasked with listening carefully, taking notes, asking follow-up questions. After months of feeling untethered and invisible, being paid to be on the receiving end of empathy felt like the best job in the world.

I would later learn that my decision to quit my “real” job wasn’t as unusual as it seemed. According to a 2023 Korn Ferry survey of more than 8,000 women, 13% have left their jobs due to menopausal symptoms, and an additional 15% have seriously considered it. And yet, somehow, we are still treating this as a personal failing rather than a systemic one. My employer was not particularly cruel or negligent. That is exactly the point.

During my exit interview, the HR representative – a woman around my age – shared a sympathetic laugh with me about some of our shared menopausal symptoms. I told her I thought companies should offer more support for women going through this transition at work. She smiled in the way people smile when they agree with you but can’t do anything about it, and moved on to the next question.

I still haven’t quite figured out exactly what this next stage of my life will look like – only that I intend to keep writing my way through it. The past several months have not been easy. They’ve been filled with 4am insomniac fears of financial ruin, a professional identity that is as all over the place as my hormones, and an accusatory voice deep inside of me that is convinced that I’m not just a person who quit, but a quitter. My insomnia and anxiety have left me looking and feeling about 1,000 years old.

Still, I don’t regret my decision. I’m starting to find my equilibrium. The supplemental hormones are slowly doing their job. The freelance bylines are starting to accumulate. In the meantime, I keep muddling through – held together with my patches and willpower – hoping for the best.

Back in that simulation, the kind-eyed nursing student told me help was on the way, and for a moment, even though I knew it was pretend, I felt the tiniest bit better.

That’s all most of us are asking for. We want someone who’s going to listen – who’s not going to squirm and change the subject, or tell us to just power through it. We don’t need to be the top priority; we just don’t want to be the last.

Jennifer Byrne is a freelance writer and journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Cut, The Boston Globe, McSweeney’s, Popular Science, Atlas Obscura, and elsewhere. She received a 2022 prose fellowship from the New Jersey Council for the Arts. She is currently at work on a memoir. She lives in New Jersey.

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