Health
CDC warns of extreme heat dangers amid ‘record-breaking high temperatures’
Many regions across the United States experienced “record-breaking high temperatures” in 2023 due to extreme heat, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Emergency room visits due to heat-related illness peaked in several regions in the U.S. and remained elevated for a prolonged duration compared to visits between 2018 and 2022, the agency’s recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report noted.
More males went to the emergency room for heat-related illnesses than females – especially those between 18 and 64 years old.
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Americans are experiencing “longer, hotter and more frequent episodes of extreme heat,” the report states.
Is extreme heat a public threat?
“Extreme heat could be considered an invisible killer in so much as many people become exposed and vulnerable to its dangers quickly and often without warning,” Patrick McHugh, M.D., an emergency medicine physician at Cleveland Clinic Akron General in Akron, Ohio, told Fox News Digital.
Many regions across the United States experienced “record-breaking high temperatures” in 2023 due to extreme heat, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (iStock)
Although McHugh said Americans “shouldn’t worry,” he emphasized the need to “be aware and prepared for the dangers of heat waves.”
An EPA spokesperson told Fox News Digital, “As average temperatures rise due to climate change, the risk of extreme temperatures, heat waves and record-breaking temperatures increases.”
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Here’s what to know about extreme heat and how to stay safe.
What is extreme heat?
“Extreme heat can be defined depending on a variety of factors, including location, weather conditions (such as cloud cover, humidity and temperature), and the time of year,” said an EPA spokesperson in an email.
It typically occurs when the weather is much hotter and/or more humid than average in a particular area, the agency added.
Emergency room visits due to heat-related illness peaked in several regions in the U.S. and remained elevated for a prolonged duration compared to visits between 2018 and 2022. (iStock)
While summertime temperatures of 100 degrees Fahrenheit might be normal for Phoenix, Arizona, for example — the same temperatures are considered extreme for Boston, Massachusetts.
“Where in the U.S. people are most susceptible to heat depends on what is normal for a given location and the type of infrastructure (such as access to air conditioning),” the EPA spokesperson noted.
“Extreme heat is becoming more common in places that have not historically experienced extreme heat … and don’t have the infrastructure to keep people cool, which has major consequences for health and safety.”
“Extreme heat could be considered an invisible killer … as many people become exposed and vulnerable to its dangers quickly and often without warning.”
A heat wave is typically defined as a “prolonged period of abnormally hot weather, usually lasting more than two days in a row,” the EPA spokesperson said.
Heat waves can occur with or without humidity.
The average global temperature has risen by more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the mid-1800s, according to McHugh.
Elderly adults, infants, individuals taking certain medications and people with disabilities are at greater risk of heat-related illnesses. (iStock)
“This results in greater extreme heat temperatures, increased variability in temperatures and an increase in the risk of heat illness,” he told Fox News Digital.
The EPA’s Heat Waves indicator, which monitors trends in heat waves for 50 cities across the U.S. over the past 60 years, shows that heat waves are occurring more often over a longer period of time — both in average number of days and season length — and are also becoming hotter over time.
Risk factors for extreme heat effects
Elderly adults, infants, individuals taking certain medications and people with disabilities are at greater risk of heat-related illnesses, according to McHugh, who has a specialty in wilderness medicine.
These individuals may not have adequate resources to escape the heat and protect themselves, he warned.
“Extreme heat is becoming more common in places that have not historically experienced extreme heat … and don’t have the infrastructure to keep people cool, which has major consequences for health and safety,” an EPA spokesperson said. (iStock)
“Many schools in northern parts of the U.S. do not have air conditioning, so when heat waves happen in May/June or [in] September, students and teachers can be at risk,” the EPA spokesperson noted.
Certain factors can also increase someone’s risk of developing a heat-related illness, including fever, dehydration, prescription drug use, alcohol use or sunburn, according to the CDC.
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Healthy people can be at risk if they engage in strenuous physical activity when it’s very hot outside — which means it’s important to balance activities with actions that cool the body to prevent heat-related illness, the EPA advised.
Certain settings — such as inside cars, construction worksites and homes with little to no air conditioning — can also put people at greater risk, according to the CDC.
Heat island effect
Some urban areas experience higher temperatures compared to outlying areas.
“Structures such as buildings, roads and other infrastructure absorb and re-emit the sun’s heat more than natural landscapes like forests and water bodies,” the EPA spokesperson said.
These highly concentrated areas, which have limited greenery, become “islands” of higher temperatures relative to outlying areas.
It’s important to balance activities with actions that cool the body to prevent heat-related illness, the EPA advised. (iStock)
“Daytime temperatures in urban areas are about 1 to 7 [degrees Fahrenheit] higher than temperatures in outlying areas, and nighttime temperatures are about 2-5 [degrees Fahrenheit] higher,” the agency noted.
People living and working in these areas are at higher risk of heat-related illness and death.
“Prolonged exposure to high temperatures is associated with increased hospital admissions for cardiovascular, kidney and respiratory disorders.”
As people lose control of their internal temperature amid extreme heat, they may experience a range of illnesses, including heat cramps, heat exhaustion, heat stroke and hyperthermia, according to the EPA.
“Prolonged exposure to high temperatures is associated with increased hospital admissions for cardiovascular, kidney and respiratory disorders,” the spokesperson said.
A particular setting can also place people at high risk, including inside cars, construction worksites and homes with little to no air conditioning, according to the CDC. (iStock)
Some 1,220 people die of heat-related illness every year in the United States due to extreme heat, per CDC estimates.
“Heat islands also increase energy demand for cooling, which can increase greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution and can be a financial burden for many people — particularly low- or fixed-income households,” the EPA spokesperson said.
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Everyone should have a plan in case of extreme heat, McHugh advised. “Either an air-conditioned home or building where shelter from the heat is easily available should be used.”
Extreme cold is dangerous, too
Those who counter climate change claims warn of extreme temperatures at both ends of the spectrum.
Most studies have shown that extreme cold causes about 10 times more excess deaths than extreme heat, according to William Happer, PhD, professor emeritus of physics at Princeton University in New Jersey and a prominent critic of climate extremism.
Most studies have shown that extreme cold causes about 10 times more excess deaths than extreme heat, according to a physics professor. (iStock)
A 2015 international study that analyzed deaths between 1985 and 2012 in 13 countries, including the U.S., found that most of the deaths due to adverse temperatures were attributable to cold weather.
The study, which was published in The Lancet, also revealed that most deaths were caused not by extreme temperatures, but by exposure to moderately hot and cold temperatures.
A more recent study published in The Lancet Planetary Health in 2021 found that for every death associated with heat, nine were connected to cold.
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“No one knows how much of the modest recent warming, around 1 [degree Celsius] over the past century, has been due to greenhouse gases and how much is natural,” Happer told Fox News Digital.
He estimates that less than half of the warming is from increasing greenhouse gases.
“Whatever the cause, observations clearly show that there has been very little change in daily high temperatures,” Happer noted.
A more recent study published in The Lancet Planetary Health in 2021 found that for every death associated with heat, nine were connected to cold. (Credit: Fox News)
“The warming is almost all due to warmer minimum temperatures at night and in the winter.”
Compared to lives lost due to the extreme heat, the warming should have saved more lives that would have been lost because of the extreme cold, he said.
For local heat and health information, the EPA spokesperson recommended using the CDC’s Heat and Health Tracker.
Americans can also visit their local National Weather Service (NWS) Forecast Offices for real-time heat-related warnings.
Fox Weather can also be consulted on a regular basis for up-to-date weather information and news.
For more Health articles, visit www.foxnews.com/health.
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A young woman who started vaping at the age of 15 has been given just 18 months to live — after being diagnosed with lung cancer in her early 20s.
Kayley Boda, 22, of Manchester, in the United Kingdom, was engaging in heavy vaping on a regular basis when she started coughing up a brown substance with “grainy bits” in it in January 2025, news agency SWNS reported.
The retail assistant said doctors turned her away eight times, telling her she had a chest infection — until she began coughing up blood.
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After seven biopsies, Boda was diagnosed with lung cancer. She underwent surgery to remove the lower lobe of her right lung, as well as chemotherapy — and in February 2026, got the all-clear, the same source reported.
Two months later, though, doctors said the cancer had come back in the pleural lining. Now she’s been given 18 months to live.
Kayley Boda, 22, is shown in the hospital. She started coughing up a brown substance with “grainy bits” in January 2025, she said. She had been vaping since the age of 15. (SWNS)
The young woman has now issued a warning to others to be aware of the dangers of vaping.
Boda said she smoked a bit as a young teenager. She took up vaping after that.
Then, “a few months after I switched from reusable vapes to disposable ones, I started coughing up brown, grainy mucus,” as SWNS reported.
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“Doctors turned me away eight times with a chest infection. … Then I started coughing up blood, so they did an X-ray and found a shadow on my lung,” she added.
“They told me they were 99% sure, [since I was] so young, that it wasn’t cancer, so not to worry about it. When I got the results back, and they told me it was lung cancer, it felt so surreal.”
Boda said she was “very naive” before her diagnosis and thought that “something like this would never happen to me.”
She said that she had surgery to remove half of her right lung.
“After the surgery, I started chemo and I had a terrible reaction to it. I couldn’t lift my head up. I was throwing up blood. I was urinating blood. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep.”
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She said that when she got the “all clear [in Feb. 2026], it felt amazing, but just two months later I was told the cancer had come back, and I have 18 months to live.”
She added, “I’m 22. This isn’t meant to happen to somebody my age.”
“Stay off the vapes because they will catch up with you.”
She blames her cancer on vaping, she said.
“My symptoms started a few months after I started disposable vapes, and there’s no lung cancer in my family,” she said. “I haven’t vaped for three months, I’ve made my partner stop, I’ve made my mom stop, I’m urging all my friends to stop. Stay off the vapes,” she continued, “because they will catch up with you.”
When doctors did an X-ray, they found a shadow on Boda’s right lung. She was later diagnosed with lung cancer and has undergone surgery to remove the lower lobe of her right lung, as well as chemotherapy. (SWNS)
She said she’d been using reusable vapes since the age of 15 and began using disposable vapes a few months before her cancer symptoms started.
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In November 2024, when she developed a rash all over her body, doctors said it could have been due to shingles, chicken pox or scabies, she told SWNS.
‘Nothing worked’
“I got treated for all three, and nothing worked,” Boda said. “It got to the point where I was cutting myself from scratching so hard.”
A few months after that, she began coughing up a dark brown mucus, with “grainy bits, the consistency of sugar, in it,” she said. When the coughing continued, she visited the doctor’s office, but was told it could be scarring from pneumonia or a chest infection, she also said.
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It wasn’t until March 2025 that she began coughing up bright red blood. At that point, doctors gave her a chest X-ray and told her they’d found a shadow on her lower right lung.
Over the next four months, she had seven biopsies as doctors took samples from the “shadow.” In August, when she went to get the results, she was told she had stage one lung cancer.
Boda is shown in the hospital. She was diagnosed with lung cancer and had surgery to remove the lower lobe of her right lung, as well as chemotherapy. (SWNS)
In September 2025, she had surgery to remove the lower lobe of her right lung, and the surrounding lymph nodes. During the surgery, doctors upstaged her cancer from stage one to stage three after finding cancer in six surrounding lymph nodes, she said.
Following the surgery, Boda was unable to breathe properly and had to learn to walk all over again.
“The oncologist said this is so rare.”
After finishing chemotherapy in February 2026, Kayley was given the all clear, leaving her feeling elated.
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However, just a month after that, she began experiencing extreme chest pains and was told by doctors she had a pleural effusion — a build-up of fluid in the lungs. She had the fluid removed, but when doctors tested it, they discovered her cancer had returned to the pleural lining of her lungs, giving her 18 months to live.
“The oncologist said this is so rare, and usually something they see in patients that are 80 years old,” she said, as SWNS reported.
Increasingly, vacation hot spots are enforcing strict bans on the use of e-cigarettes in public venues. (iStock)
Boda claimed that doctors were unable to pin her cancer to a specific cause — but told her that smoking and vaping definitely didn’t help.
Since her diagnosis, she has stopped and is urging others to stop, too.
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She’s hoping to raise the thousands of dollars needed for treatment to try to prolong her life, she said.
Last year, Fox News Digital reported on the case of a Pennsylvania woman, 26, who said she vaped for just one year before her lungs collapsed. She was 22 when she took up the habit, she said in an interview.
“Everybody warned me about it, but I didn’t listen — I wish that I did,” she said.
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Dr. David Campbell, clinical director and program director at Recover Together Bend in Oregon, told Fox News Digital at that time that signs of collapsed lungs include sharp chest or shoulder pain, shortness of breath and difficulty breathing.
Lung issues are just one of the many health issues linked to vaping, he warned. The habit can also increase the risk of heart disease and stroke, as well as exposure to harmful heavy metals.
Melissa Rudy of Fox News Digital contributed reporting.
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The key to feeling better in a fast, overstimulated world might be surprisingly simple: Live a little more like your grandparents.
A growing social media trend, dubbed “nonnamaxxing,” draws inspiration from the slower, more intentional rhythms associated with an Italian grandmother.
The lifestyle is often linked to activities like preparing home-cooked meals, spending time outdoors and making meaningful connections.
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“Nonnamaxxing is a 2026 trend that embraces the slower, more intentional lifestyle of an Italian grandmother (a Nonna). Think cooking from scratch, long family meals, daily walks, gardening and less screen time,” Erin Palinski-Wade, a New Jersey-based registered dietitian, told Fox News Digital.
Nonnamaxxing, derived from the name for an Italian grandmother, is a trend that incorporates lifestyle habits hundreds of years in the making. (iStock)
Stepping away from screens and toward real-world interaction can have measurable benefits, according to California-based psychotherapist Laurie Singer.
“We know that interacting with others in person, rather than spending time on screens, significantly improves mental health,” she told Fox News Digital, adding that social media often fuels comparison and lowers self-esteem.
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Living more like previous generations isn’t purely driven by nostalgia. Cooking meals from scratch, for example, has been linked to better nutrition and more mindful eating patterns.
Adopting traditional mealtime habits can improve diet quality and support both physical and mental health, especially when meals are shared regularly with others, Palinski-Wade noted.
One longevity expert stresses that staying healthy isn’t just about food — it’s also about joy and community. (iStock)
There’s also a psychological benefit to slowing down and focusing on one task at a time. Anxiety often stems from unfinished or avoided tasks, Singer noted, and engaging in hands-on activities can counteract that.
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“Nonnamaxxing encourages us to be present around a task, like gardening, baking or knitting, or just taking a mindful walk, that delivers something ‘real,’” she said.
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Palinski-Wade cautions against turning the trend into another source of pressure, noting that a traditional “nonna” lifestyle often assumes a different pace of life.
The key, she said, is adapting the mindset, not replicating it perfectly.
Nonnamaxxing, derived from the name for an Italian grandmother, is a trend that incorporates lifestyle habits hundreds of years in the making. (iStock)
The goal is to reintroduce small, intentional moments that make you feel better.
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That might mean prioritizing a few shared meals each week, taking a walk without your phone or setting aside time for a simple hobby, the expert recommended.
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Singer added, “Having a positive place to escape to, through whatever activities speak to us and make us happy, isn’t generational – it’s human.”
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Feeling lonely may take a toll on older adults’ memory — but it may not speed up cognitive decline, according to a new study.
Researchers from Colombia, Spain and Sweden analyzed data from more than 10,000 adults ages 65 to 94 across 12 European countries and found those who reported higher levels of loneliness did worse on memory tests at the start of the study, according to research published this month in the journal Aging & Mental Health.
Over a seven-year period, however, memory decline occurred at a similar rate regardless of how lonely participants felt.
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“The finding that loneliness significantly impacted memory, but not the speed of decline in memory over time was a surprising outcome,” lead author Dr. Luis Carlos Venegas-Sanabria of the School of Medicine and Health Sciences at the Universidad del Rosario said in a statement.
Loneliness may be linked to memory performance in older adults, a new study suggests. (iStock)
“It suggests that loneliness may play a more prominent role in the initial state of memory than in its progressive decline,” Venegas-Sanabria said, adding that the findings highlight the importance of addressing loneliness as a factor in cognitive performance.
The findings add to debate about whether loneliness contributes to dementia risk. While loneliness and social isolation are often considered risk factors for cognitive decline, research results have been mixed.
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The study looked at data from the long-running Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which tracked 10,217 older adults between 2012 and 2019. Participants were asked to recall words immediately and after a delay to measure memory performance.
Social isolation and loneliness could play a surprising role in cognitive health among seniors. (iStock)
Loneliness was assessed using three questions about how often participants felt isolated, left out or lacking companionship.
About 8% of participants reported high levels of loneliness at the outset. That group tended to be older, more likely to be female and more likely to have conditions such as depression.
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Researchers found that those with higher loneliness had lower scores on both immediate and delayed memory tests at baseline. Still, all groups — regardless of loneliness level — experienced similar declines in memory over time.
The results suggest loneliness may not directly accelerate the progression of memory loss, though it remains linked to poorer cognitive performance overall.
Researchers look at a brain scan at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Experts warn, however, that the findings should not be interpreted to mean loneliness is harmless.
“The finding that lonely older adults start with worse memory but don’t decline faster is actually the most interesting part of the paper, and I think it’s easy to misread,” said Jordan Weiss, Ph.D., a scientific advisor and aging expert at Assisted Living Magazine and a professor at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
“It likely means loneliness does its damage earlier in life, well before people show up in a study like this at 65-plus,” Weiss told Fox News Digital.
By older age, long-term social patterns may already be established, making it harder to detect when the effects of loneliness first took hold, an aging expert says. (iStock)
He suggested that by older age, long-term social patterns may already be established, making it harder to detect when the effects of loneliness first took hold.
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“By the time you’re measuring someone in their late 60s, decades of social connection patterns are already baked in,” he said.
Weiss, who was not involved in the research, added that loneliness may coincide with other health conditions, and noted that participants who felt more isolated also had higher rates of depression, high-blood pressure and diabetes. The link, he said, may reflect a cluster of health risks rather than a direct cause.
“While they can go hand-in-hand, it’s not clear that loneliness contributes to dementia,” a psychotherapist says. (iStock)
Amy Morin, a Florida-based psychotherapist and author, said the findings reflect a broader pattern in research on loneliness and brain health, and that the relationship may be more complex than it appears.
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“The evidence shows there’s a link between loneliness and cognitive decline but there’s no direct evidence of a cause and effect relationship,” she said. “So while they can go hand-in-hand, it’s not clear that loneliness contributes to dementia.”
Morin added that loneliness, which can fluctuate, may not be the root of the problem, but rather a symptom of other underlying mental or physical health issues.
Researchers suggested screening for loneliness be incorporated into routine cognitive assessments as one way to support healthy aging. (iStock)
She said staying socially and mentally engaged is crucial for overall brain health.
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“It’s important to be proactive about social activities,” Morin said. “Joining a book club, having coffee with a friend, or attending faith-based services can be a powerful way to maintain connections in older age.”
The researchers also suggested screening for loneliness be incorporated into routine cognitive assessments as one way to support healthy aging.
Fox News Digital reached out to the researchers for comment.
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