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Biohackers like it. Athletes and Joe Rogan do, too. Stanford neuroscientist and podcaster Andrew Huberman says it “sharpens the mind.” On social media, health and wellness influencers explain how they use it for a pre-workout boost or as part of their “stacks.” (Todd, 2/20)

Overdose deaths are falling, but America's illicit drug supply is re-engineering itself into lethal cocktails: fentanyl plus stimulants, sedatives, and novel synthetics that hide in party powders and pressed pills. (Contreras, 2/20)

A woman hands her 9-month-old baby girl a pepper-dusted stick of golden grass-fed butter on a silver platter in one TikTok post. Another gives her toddler pats of butter out of “pure desperation” to keep her “always-hungry” toddler fuller longer after meals. (Rogers, 2/19)

Pfizer Inc. is drawing on lessons learned years ago from rolling out Viagra as it maps out the launch of its first obesity medicine. The parallels between weight loss and erectile dysfunction — two sensitive health topics influenced by social perceptions — are among the factors helping to inform the US drugmaker as it considers how best to introduce the monthly injection just gained from its acquisition of Metsera Inc., according to Alexandre de Germay, Pfizer’s chief international commercial officer. (Furlong, 2/19)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Should Drug Companies Be Advertising To Consumers?

Tamar Abrams had a lousy couple of years in 2022 and ’23. Both her parents died; a relationship ended; she retired from communications consulting. She moved from Arlington, Virginia, to Warren, Rhode Island, where she knew all of two people. “I was kind of a mess,” recalled Abrams, 69. Trying to cope, “I was eating myself into oblivion.” As her weight hit 270 pounds and her blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood glucose levels climbed, “I knew I was in trouble health-wise.” (Span, 2/20)

Byron Caughey, PhD, hailed as a “titan” in the field of prion diseases, has died. He was 68 years old. Caughey, who died February 15, was chief of the Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy/Prion Biochemistry Section of the Laboratory of Persistent Viral Diseases at the National Institute of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana. His major research areas included Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and prion structural biology, biochemistry, cell biology, diagnostic tests, and therapeutics. (Van Beusekom, 2/19)

Eric Dane, the actor best known as the charming plastic surgeon nicknamed McSteamy on the wildly successful ABC medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy,” has died. He was 53. His death was confirmed by his publicist Melissa Bank. He had been treated for A.L.S., a neurological disorder also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, which breaks down a patient’s ability to control muscles, speak and eventually breathe without assistance. (Diaz, 2/19)