The woman, a field geologist, was healthy and active, yet she would pass out at inopportune moments.The day was sweltering. The 61-year-old woman urged her donkey into a trot. She loved riding around the ring on the beautiful white beast — at a walk, then a trot, then a canter. Suddenly she noticed a tingling in her hands and feet spreading toward her torso. She recognized the sensation but willed herself to ignore it. It didn’t work. Her strength seemed to melt away, and before she could say or do anything, she felt herself slumping forward. As the world turned gray, the donkey stopped. Her arms, and then her body, slid down the animal’s sweaty neck and onto the ground. Then everything went black.She woke up looking at her donkey’s snow-white belly. He leaned down and nickered softly, then brayed at the approaching instructor. Are you OK? The instructor called out in alarm. Should I call an ambulance? She was fine, the woman assured the instructor. It was just that hot weather could really get to her. She allowed herself to be helped over to the cool darkness of the barn. As she lay on the damp concrete floor, warm tears made their way down her face. I can’t keep going like this, she thought.She first fainted maybe four years earlier. She was at the gym, finishing up a brisk walk on the treadmill, when she felt the odd tingling. Black dots swam in front of her eyes, and she heard the thump of her head hitting the wall of windows in front of her. Then the black took over. She awakened surrounded by worried faces. It was strange — she was an active person. Her job as a field geologist kept her hiking and climbing regularly.She went to her primary care provider, a nurse practitioner. She had high blood pressure, the N.P. said, but was otherwise healthy. The woman was sent to a local cardiologist. Yes, she told that doctor, she did get out of breath more easily than she used to. And yes, sometimes she did get more tired than she expected. But no, she never had chest pain or pressure. Mostly she felt fine. And she didn’t faint often: a few times a year, mostly in the summer when she was exerting herself in the heat. She had an exercise stress test and, when that was normal, a scan in which a radioactive dye outlined how effectively her heart was beating. It was also normal. So was an echocardiogram.So the woman’s N.P. focused on her blood pressure and improvements to her diet. But even when her blood pressure seemed to be perfect, every now and then she would find herself on the ground looking up at concerned faces.A Hard Look at Her HeartIt was after the fall from the donkey that the woman decided she needed a new set of eyes on her problem. She made an appointment with Dr. David Ramos, a cardiologist at a Columbia New York-Presbyterian office in Monroe, N.Y., near her home in the village of Piermont. It took months to get in. But when she finally met Ramos, he listened thoughtfully as she described her worsening sense of being out of breath, her increasing fatigue during even mild exertion, the repeated blacking out. An exam was unremarkable. Ramos reviewed her records. Fainting, known medically as syncope, is a common enough problem caused by diminished blood flow to the brain. Forty percent of us will faint at least once in our lives. And for most of us, it will be only once, triggered by a sudden change in either blood pressure or heart rate, often in reaction to a medication or some type of emotional or physical stress.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.

Meg HughesA mother is urging parents to get their children vaccinated after losing one of her baby twins to flu on Christmas Day.

Getty ImagesProposals on the long-term funding of adult social care in England are unlikely to be delivered before 2028 at the earliest, the government has confirmed.

The administration is committing an additional $306 million toward battling the virus, and will distribute the money before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office.The Biden administration, in a final push to shore up the nation’s pandemic preparedness infrastructure before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office, announced on Thursday that it is committing an additional $306 million toward efforts to ward off a potential outbreak of bird flu in humans.Federal health officials have been keeping a close eye on H5N1, a strain of avian influenza that is highly contagious and lethal to chickens, and has spread to cattle. The virus has not yet demonstrated that it can spread efficiently among people.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that the current risk to humans remains low, and that pasteurized milk products remain safe to consume. But should human-to-human transmission become commonplace, experts fear a pandemic that could be far more deadly than Covid-19.The Biden administration has already spent about $1.8 billion battling bird flu since the spring of last year; $1.5 billion of that was spent by the federal Agriculture Department on fighting the virus among animals. The remainder has been spent by the Health and Human Services Department on efforts to protect people, according to federal officials.The additional $306 million will go toward improving hospital preparedness, early stage research on therapeutics, diagnostics and vaccines. About $103 million will help maintain state and local efforts to track and test people exposed to infected animals, and for outreach to livestock workers and others at high risk.The funds will be distributed in the next two weeks, Dr. Paul Friedrichs, the director of the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, said in an interview Thursday.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.

PA MediaTemperatures have dropped as colder arctic air spreads across the UK, with amber cold weather health alerts in place ahead of a weekend of snow forecast for much of the country.

Stuart Woodward/BBCVisits have been severely restricted at a hospital battling a surge in flu cases.

Getty ImagesThe proportion of patients diagnosed with cancer at an early stage has risen to its highest level on record, NHS figures in England show.

Officials in other countries are warning about the health hazards of alcohol in any amount. Americans are still told that moderate drinking is safe. What gives?A report that is intended to shape the next edition of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines has broken sharply with an emerging scientific consensus that alcohol has no health benefits.The evidence review, by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in December, revived a once-dominant hypothesis that moderate drinking is linked to fewer heart attack and stroke deaths, and fewer deaths overall, compared with never drinking.Many scientists now take issue with that view. And some fear that, based on the new analysis, the influential dietary guidelines may fail to address recent research into the harms of drinking.The guidelines are revised once every five years, and there have been growing concerns about rising alcohol consumption in the United States in recent decades.“This report is a thinly veiled effort to undo the growing evidence that alcohol causes cancer and is increasingly associated with serious health outcomes,” said Diane Riibe, who co-founded the U.S. Alcohol Policy Alliance, a nonprofit focused on the harms of alcohol.The report did note a small but significantly heightened risk of breast cancer associated with moderate drinking, but said there wasn’t enough evidence to link moderate consumption to other cancers. The National Cancer Institute, among other scientific bodies, disagrees.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.

Passengers on several of the carrier’s flights said the biting pests were on seats, blankets and in overhead bins and that the airline did not take action.Shortly after boarding her Turkish Airlines flight from Johannesburg to Istanbul last March, Patience Titcombe, 36, from Phoenix, noticed a small bug crawling on her seat when she got up to use the restroom.“I almost flicked it away,” she said, “But my friend stopped me and said, ‘That’s a bedbug.’” Ms. Titcombe, who had experience with the bugs when she lived in Philadelphia, realized her friend was right and photographed the bug on her seat.She then called over the flight attendant, who disposed of the bug. When Ms. Titcombe and her friend confronted the flight attendant about its being a bedbug, she said, the attendant dismissed their concern.“I had to strip down at the airport and change clothes because I have kids — what if I brought bedbugs home?” Ms. Titcombe said. She said her complaints to Turkish Airlines after her flight were met with denials, despite her photographic evidence. After posting about her experience on multiple social media channels, Ms. Titcombe said other users in a Facebook travel group reported similar experiences.Patience Titcombe photographed this bug on her Turkish Airlines flight from Johannesburg to Istanbul and says the airline dismissed her concerns. Patience TitcombeIn October, two other travelers said they encountered bedbugs on the airline’s flights. On Oct. 5, Matthew Myers and his girlfriend were flying from Istanbul to San Francisco when Mr. Myers, 28, from San Francisco, said the passenger seated next to him tapped him on the shoulder to show him there were bedbugs on the seats and falling from the ceiling. Mr. Myers said he saw bugs fall onto the person’s lap. “Multiple passengers were asking to move seats after discovering bugs,” Mr. Myers said. According to his account, one passenger relocated to the flight attendant jump seat when bugs were seen falling from the ceiling. He said a flight attendant told the passengers she had filed an official complaint during the flight.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.

We asked researchers, couples counselors and sex therapists for some simple strategies to strengthen your romantic relationship in 2025.Traditional New Year’s health resolutions can feel punishing: Eat better, drink less, hit the gym. Worthy goals … but also, kind of a drag.The good news? Relationships have a big effect on health and happiness, too. So in 2025, why not focus on a different wellness goal: Give your romantic life a little T.L.C.Well reached out to couples counselors, sex therapists and relationship researchers and asked a simple question: What is one resolution you recommend for couples looking to experience greater connection and intimacy in the coming year?1. Cultivate curiosity.Approaching your partner with a sense of curiosity can help you learn new things about who they are — and open up conversations you’ve never had before — even if you’ve been together for years, said Justin Garcia, executive director at the Kinsey Institute, the sexuality and relationships research center at Indiana University.“Curiosity is a powerful, powerful tonic — that we should all invest in more,” Dr. Garcia said. It sends an irresistible message: I am interested in you.One simple way to foster a more curious mind-set within your relationship is to ask your partner something new every week or so, he suggested.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.