Rates of bowel cancer are rising among younger adults, with no clear reason why, experts are warning.

Odds are your adolescent has already encountered online pornography. Your role is to openly address it, scholars say.The average American first sees online pornography at age 12, and nearly three-quarters of all teenagers have encountered it, according to a 2023 survey of adolescents by Common Sense. It’s enough to make most any parent squirm, but Brian Willoughby, a social scientist at Brigham Young University who studies the pornography habits of adolescents and the impact on relationships, has some advice: “Don’t panic.” Instead, he says, help your child understand that “this is a normal and acceptable topic, even if you’re stressed out.” Here are some suggestions for how to broach the subject:Build a DialogueFirst, try to take some of the intense emotion — yours and your child’s — out of the conversation. “Start with helping them feel calm and validated,” Dr. Willoughby said. “They can’t have a conversation with you if they are feeling strong emotions.” Then, he said, “assess their reaction to porn — were they excited, disgusted, attracted, disinterested? — and make them feel safe sharing this with you.”That shared trust forms the basis for a next step, he said: “Tie your own values into the conversation. Share what your view of porn is and why.”He noted that adolescents crave a clear explanation, not merely a pronouncement that pornography is “wrong.” Dr. Willoughby suggested that parents “talk through some of the details of porn to point out problems with expectations and intimate behaviors” and then “tie these thoughts and views to your overall hopes and values about sexual intimacy.”Try Content BlockersNumerous phone and computer apps offer help blocking pornographic content.These can “potentially buy a few years of protection” if loaded on a child’s phone and other devices, said Melea Stephens, a family therapist in Alabama who speaks to universities, legislators and church groups about the harm that exposure to pornography can present to children and teenagers.Despite such barriers, studies indicate that most young people will stumble across the content or find their way to it. At that point, Ms. Stephens said, parents should take their adolescent aside and “explain the difference between a real, loving, mutually respectful romantic relationship and the destructive dynamics and meta-messages being depicted in pornography.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

A growing cottage industry is dedicated to the theory that mind-altering drugs can improve business leadership.Burrowed in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies is a wooden house, a retreat center made of pine and spruce and filled with mushroom carvings, tapestries of periwinkle and indigo paisley, books about “The Indoctrinated Brain” and other paraphernalia nodding to the promised transformation: Enter as a chief executive, emerge as an enlightened one.When a group of executives wearing hoodies and leggings arrived on a Tuesday evening in October, they vibrated with the nervous energy of summer camp drop-off. They were gathered for a retreat called “The Psychedelic C.E.O.,” which they had agreed to let me observe.Their guide, Murray Rodgers, used to be a hard-charging oil and gas executive. About a decade ago, he underwent a process of self-discovery. It began after a miserable pairing — a divorce and a failed company initial public offering — that left him alone on his 60th birthday, watching Hugh Grant’s romantic comedy “The Rewrite” and wondering if it was time for a rewrite of his own. He became a yoga instructor and then went to Costa Rica to try ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic brew. This started a sequence of mushroom trips and psychedelic ceremonies that left Mr. Rodgers, now 69, spiritually, psychologically and professionally transfigured.It was as if he had thrown his ego into a dryer and watched it shrink, and he became intent on helping others with that same kind of cosmic laundering.He wrote a book, “The Psychedelic C.E.O.,” and after hearing from readers, he also began hosting retreats. On that day in October, he welcomed five business leaders — Adam, Adam, Jill, Chris and Ajay — most of whom requested to use only their first names so as not to alarm their investors, employees or children with their unconventional approach to professional development. All run small businesses in the Calgary area and had met through an entrepreneurs’ network.After their arrival, they scarfed down bowls of thick lentil soup and then settled on couches in a downstairs den, waiting for Mr. Rodgers to introduce the agenda.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

More adolescents than ever are watching it. What’s needed, researchers say, are frank conversations and “porn literacy.”Brian Willoughby knows he’s doing a good job when parents become uncomfortable. That’s because part of his job involves telling them that their teenagers are looking at pornography — hard-core, explicit, often violent. Sometimes, the conversation is with a church group.Dr. Willoughby is a social scientist at Brigham Young University, where he studies the pornography habits of adolescents and the impact this has on relationships. When he goes into the community to explain what the modern world is like, he speaks plainly.“I always have to be careful to couch things by saying, ‘I’m not saying porn is good — but I am saying it’s a reality,’” he said. “You can stick your head in the sand and pretend it doesn’t exist, and say this is bad and pray harder, or use addiction language, but you have to have a realistic understanding of what’s happening.”In the past, many parents have tried to ignore the watching of pornography by their children, forbid its use or wish it away. But scholars who study the adolescent use of online pornography say that the behavior is so commonplace and impossible to prevent that a more pragmatic approach is required. When it comes to pornography, they want us to talk about it.The aim: to teach adolescents that the explicit content they encounter is unrealistic, misleading about many sexual relations and, as a result, potentially harmful. The approach does not condone the content or encourage its use, Dr. Willoughby emphasized, but acknowledges its ubiquity and unrealistic, hard-core nature. Long gone are the days of nude magazines that left much to the imagination.“That was nudity, sexualized,” Dr. Willoughby said of the pornography of yesteryear. “A lot of parents still think that porn is Playboy.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

SWNSWarning:

The rate of medical assistance in dying – also known as euthanasia – has grown in Canada for the fifth straight year, albeit at a slower pace.

Employees at UnitedHealthcare and other companies described being fearful after an outpouring of online vitriol.The fatal shooting last week of an executive on the streets of New York City plunged his family members and colleagues into grief. For rank-and-file employees across the health insurance industry, the killing has left them with an additional emotion: fear, with many frightened for their own safety and feeling under attack for their work.Health insurance companies have increased security measures since the killing of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, and as an outpouring of online rage toward the industry has followed. Health care leaders have spoken with frustration about feeling vilified, and in the Minneapolis suburbs where United is headquartered, police officers stepped up protection of the company’s offices.“Clearly the employees have been shaken,” said Mayor Brad Wiersum of Minnetonka, who said the city was working “just to provide that reassurance and that security, to let people know that we are going to do everything we can to keep them safe.”One UnitedHealthcare worker who processes claims described being cleareyed about the American health care system’s shortcomings, but also believes that she and her colleagues did their best to help patients within the limits of that system. Like most workers interviewed, she did not want to be named because, given the reaction after Mr. Thompson’s killing, she feared for her own safety.The reaction by some others to the killing, the employee said, had been startling and horrifying. The worker, who has been at the company for many years, described being told in recent days by an acquaintance that as an employee of UnitedHealthcare she was responsible for millions of people being denied lifesaving care, and that if she had any ethics, she would see the killing as the impetus to quit her job.“Lots of us were feeling like we were horrible because we’re being accused of working for the evil empire,” the employee said. “But we all do the best we can to do a good job in the system we are in.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

A new study highlights the need for public health officials to ramp up bird flu surveillance in our feline companions.Domestic cats could provide an unexpected new route for the bird flu virus H5N1 to evolve into a more dangerous form, according to a new study published on Monday.In the year since the virus began circulating in dairy cattle, it has killed many cats, primarily on farms with affected herds. It has also sickened at least 60 people, most of whom had close contact with infected dairy cows or poultry.So far, H5N1 does not spread easily among people, although studies have suggested that just one or two key mutations could allow the virus to make that leap.There is no evidence that cats have spread H5N1 to people and they may not represent a major avenue for the evolution of bird flu, experts said. Still, if a cat were simultaneously infected with H5N1 and a seasonal flu virus, the H5N1 virus could potentially acquire the mutations it needed to spread efficiently among people.The new study highlights the need for public health officials to ramp up bird flu surveillance in cats, which tend to have frequent contact with both wild animals and people, said Dr. Suresh Kuchipudi, a veterinary microbiologist at the University of Pittsburgh and an author of the paper.For months, the testing of cows and people for H5N1 has been limited, leaving experts in the dark about the true scale of the dairy outbreak. Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that it would begin testing the national milk supply to help identify infected herds.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Family handout/PAA mum of three who died after a Brazilian butt lift (BBL) procedure had undergone a “frankly barbaric medical practice” in which she gave no informed consent, a coroner has concluded.

The agency is asking the White House to move ahead with plans to drastically reduce the addictive substance in traditional tobacco cigarettes.In the final days of the Biden administration, the Food and Drug Administration is seeking White House approval to propose a drastic reduction in the amount of nicotine in cigarettes, a longstanding goal of public health experts that has faced stiff opposition from the powerful tobacco lobby.The F.D.A. submitted the proposal to the Office of Management and Budget only on Tuesday, a sign that the move was perhaps more wishful and symbolic than realistic for a White House juggling many late-term agenda items. And traditionally, the budget office’s review of agency proposals can take months.“I think it’s a milestone in progress toward the single most game-changing tobacco regulatory policy, in terms of lives that could be saved, that F.D.A. could ever do,” said Mitch Zeller, a former director of the agency’s tobacco center. “Having said that, it’s only a proposed rule, and we’re obviously in the waning days and weeks of an outgoing administration.”Even if the F.D.A. receives clearance from the White House to advance the proposal, whether it can survive once President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January is unclear given the sustained opposition from the industry. The tobacco lobby was also a significant donor to Mr. Trump’s campaign; the cigarette maker Reynolds American had given $8.5 million to his main super PAC by late October.Mr. Trump is known to personally oppose cigarette smoking, but has not weighed in recently on agency issues like nicotine levels in cigarettes. He has chosen Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his likely nominee to run the nation’s top health agency, and Mr. Kennedy has railed against federal subsidies given to tobacco growers, saying they eclipse those sent to other farmers who grow fruits and vegetables. He listed the problem as evidence that “we are just poisoning” people and contributing to chronic disease.“It makes no sense if we want a healthy country,” he said in a speech in August.A World Health Organization study estimated in 2023 that the U.S. Agriculture Department allocated $437 million in subsidies to tobacco farmers from 2015 through 2020.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.