Health
Gym owner bans new members in January, has reasons for 'unconventional' actions
Made a New Year’s resolution to get fit and healthy again?
One gym owner says good luck with that — because there’s no place for new joiners in the month of January at his venue.
Gym owner Clayton Leah, 31, has been turning away potential new members at his gym, Ascendancy Fitness, even though this is the busiest time of year, he told Fox News Digital in a phone interview on Saturday, Jan. 4. “We stopped sign-ups on New Year’s Eve,” he said.
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He has a specific reason for his unusual stance, he said.
The purpose is to protect existing gym members and long-time fitness practitioners from an influx of new joiners, he told Fox News Digital.
Newcomers to gyms in January often wind up dropping away in short order as their intentions to maintain New Year’s resolutions wear off, one gym owner said. (iStock)
Often, he said, the eager January newcomers wind up dropping away as their intentions to maintain a New Year’s resolution wear off.
Leah said in part that he did not want “to annoy all of our existing members who have been with us for so long.”
He added of his gym’s news, “I would hate to focus more on the negative than the positive. The response has been overwhelmingly positive,” he told Fox News Digital on Saturday.
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“The majority of people appreciate the fact that we’ve done this and see why we’ve done it,” he also said. “We’ve always prioritized our membership experience — it’s so important to us.”
For those who are criticizing his gym for a “not smart” business move, it’s actually “been the opposite,” he said.
The Ascendancy Fitness leadership team, with Clayton Leah at right and business partner Jack Bramhall at left. “We’ve always prioritized our membership experience,” Leah told Fox News Digital. (Ascendancy Fitness)
“The first priority is our members, and they are highly appreciative of what we’re doing,” he said.
“Naturally, we have some inquiries about joining. And I’ve said this before, but as soon as you take something away from people, then people want it more. But that’s not why we’ve done this.”
“The only negative response people have is a case of, ‘I was going to join, but now I can’t.’”
“We wanted to try and break the mold,” he also told news agency SWNS.
He said he’s trying to “take an unconventional approach and protect our existing members – that is the most important thing for us.”
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The gym is located in Warrington, Cheshire, in England, roughly halfway between Liverpool and Manchester.
His gym has about 650 current members. It also gives one-time day passes for those who want to work out there.
The Ascendancy Fitness gym is shown above. Owner Leah said the fitness industry “is an amazing industry” and “we’re trying to help people with whatever fitness and health goals they have.” (Ascendancy Fitness)
Leah said he hopes his gym’s decision would encourage people to join the gym throughout the year — rather than just in January, when people are drawn to the venue because of ambitious New Year’s resolutions.
He said the fitness industry “is an amazing industry” and “we’re trying to help people with whatever fitness and health goals they have.”
The gym owner said the only negative reaction to the blocked memberships had been from those hoping to join.
A gym owner said that “we’re trying to help people with whatever fitness and health goals they have.” (iStock)
He said, “The only negative response people have is a case of ‘I was going to join, but now I can’t.’”
He added, “For those people, I say, ‘Well, you should have joined sooner,’” he told SWNS.
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This is not the first case of gyms or fitness clubs banning new members in January.
Equinox, a luxury fitness club, banned new members on Jan. 1, 2023, as Fox News Digital previously reported.
A gym owner did not want “to annoy all of our existing members who have been with us for so long,” he said. (iStock)
It was part of a “We Don’t Speak January” campaign to discourage short-term New Year’s resolutions and encourage long-term commitment.
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Certified personal trainer and strength coach Melissa Kendter of Pennsylvania said every trainer’s “main passion” should be guiding others toward leading a healthier lifestyle and building long-term success with sustainable habits, as Fox News Digital also previously reported.
Leah of Ascendancy Fitness said his gym is likely to reopen to new memberships in February, although the gym doesn’t have a specific date confirmed as yet.
“Obviously our plan was to avoid the January influx,” he told Fox News Digital.
Angelica Stabile of Fox News Digital contributed reporting.
Can Paxlovid treat long Covid? A new report suggests it might help some patients, but which patients might benefit remains unclear.
The report, published Monday in the journal Communications Medicine, describes the cases of 13 long Covid patients who took extended courses of the antiviral drug. Results were decidedly mixed: Nine patients reported some improvement, but only five said it lasted. Four reported no improvement at all.
Perhaps more than anything, the report underscores that nearly five years after the pandemic began, there is still little known about what can help the millions of people with long Covid. While some people improve on their own or with various therapies and medications, no treatment has yet been shown to be widely successful.
“People with long Covid are eager for treatments that can help,” said Alison Cohen, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who is an author of the new report and has long Covid herself. “There’s been a lot of research, but it continues to be slow going.”
Paxlovid, made by Pfizer, is considered a tantalizing prospect because it can prevent severe illness during active Covid infections and because patients who take the five-day course during the infection have been less likely to develop long Covid later.
In addition, a theory that some long Covid cases may be caused by remnants of virus in the body suggests that an antiviral like Paxlovid might vanquish those symptoms by extinguishing lingering virus.
Last year, the first randomized trial of Paxlovid for long Covid showed no benefit. Conducted at Stanford, it involved 155 patients who took the drug or a placebo for 15 days. While taking Paxlovid for that long was found to be safe, it didn’t help patients much: Ten weeks later, the placebo and Paxlovid groups showed no significant difference in severity of long Covid symptoms.
Dr. Upinder Singh, an infectious disease specialist and a leader of that trial, said its results and the new report primarily generated “more questions to answer”: Could Paxlovid help if taken for longer than 15 days or paired with other medications? Does its effect vary by types of symptoms or by when symptoms started?
“It’s very possible that within long Covid, there’s different disease types,” said Dr. Singh, now head of internal medicine at the University of Iowa. Maybe Paxlovid or other antivirals would help patients who could be clearly determined to have lingering virus in their bodies, she said.
Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University, said scientists shouldn’t “throw in the towel” on the possibility of antivirals for long Covid.
“If you look in the aggregate, you don’t see a difference between the placebo group, but these case reports demonstrate there are people who truly benefit, so we need to home in on those people,” said Dr. Iwasaki, who is leading another randomized trial of Paxlovid, the results of which have yet to be published.
She said important next steps would be identifying biological markers in people whose long Covid symptoms improved with Paxlovid and seeing whether other antivirals help different patients.
The new report was not a clinical trial, but a collection of self-reports from 13 long Covid patients around the country who had tried extended courses of Paxlovid. It is the first published case series of such patients, according to the authors, who include Dr. Michael Peluso, an infectious disease physician at U.C.S.F., and members of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative, a group of researchers who also have long Covid.
The experiences of the patients were too varied to yield a consistent trajectory, but the variety may provide clues for larger studies, the authors said.
The patients, ranging in age from 25 to 55, were infected between March 2020 and December 2022. They experienced one or more of a range of symptoms, including fatigue; gastrointestinal problems; cognitive problems like brain fog; muscle pain; irregular heart rate; and a condition called post-exertional malaise, in which physical or mental exertion causes setbacks.
As with the Stanford trial, most patients in the new report had been vaccinated by the time they took Paxlovid. Their Paxlovid courses ranged from 7.5 days to 30 days. Most tried it to find relief from their persistent long-Covid symptoms; two patients with long Covid received extended courses of Paxlovid when they were reinfected with the virus.
Most patients were also taking other medications or supplements, making it difficult to determine the drug’s specific effect, Dr. Cohen said. Still, some said Paxlovid helped them significantly.
Kate Leslie, 46, a social worker in Boulder, Colo., said she was healthy and athletic before her coronavirus infection in March 2022. Six weeks later, she said, she felt as if she’d had a concussion, struggling to think clearly and find words.
She developed postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, with symptoms including erratic heart rate and blood pressure and occasional fainting. A longtime Ultimate Frisbee player and coach, she began experiencing profound fatigue and could barely lift her arms.
“It was like concrete blocks are on your body,” she said. “I couldn’t get out of bed. My husband had to wash my hair and dry it and dress me.”
After an antiviral she was prescribed for a flu infection, Tamiflu, ended up easing some of her long Covid symptoms, Ms. Leslie wondered whether Covid-related antivirals might help even more, she said. In February 2023, she found a doctor to prescribe a 15-day course of Paxlovid.
Afterward, “I could feel my body getting restabilized,” she said, adding, “I started to get my energy back.”
About six months later, she obtained another 15-day course, which helped again, she said. She estimates she can now function at about 85 percent of her pre-Covid level.
Ms. Leslie said, however, that a couple of her medical issues worsened after Paxlovid, including an immune system condition that has caused allergies. Three other patients also reported bothersome issues after taking Paxlovid, including tingling and gastrointestinal discomfort.
Among those who didn’t perceive any benefit from the drug was Julia Moore Vogel. Dr. Vogel, 39, a senior program director at Scripps Research, was a long-distance runner before being infected with the coronavirus in July 2020. Now she uses a wheelchair and is largely housebound, she said.
She and her daughter recently moved across the country, from California, to live with her parents in Schaghticoke, N.Y. “I got to the point where we were like, I either need to stop working or we need more help at home,” she said.
Dr. Vogel, whose symptoms include fatigue, post-exertional malaise and migraines, took a 10-day course of Paxlovid in April 2023. “It just had no impact for me at all,” she said.
These days, she manages by carefully budgeting her energy, trying to leave the house no more than once a week. Migraine medications provided some relief, she said, but other than that, “I’ve tried many things, and basically nothing has really helped me improve.”
Dr. Cohen said the report strengthens the theory that long Covid has many different causes and treatments.
“A really important question is who may benefit from taking an extended course of Paxlovid and why,” she said, “and if it benefits some symptoms, which symptoms does it benefit?”
For the nearly 20,000 women in the U.S. who receive an ovarian cancer diagnosis each year, artificial intelligence is emerging as a potentially life-saving tool.
In a new study led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, AI models did a better job of detecting ovarian cancer than human doctors.
The research, which was published in Nature Medicine, tested an AI model’s ability to distinguish between benign and malignant lesions on the ovaries, according to a press release.
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The AI model was trained on more than 17,000 ultrasound images from 3,652 patients across 20 hospitals in eight countries, the release stated.
“High-quality diagnostics can become more accessible, particularly in regions with limited access to experienced examiners,” said a study author. (iStock)
The AI model achieved an accuracy rate of 86% for detecting ovarian cancer, compared to 82% for human experts and 77% for those with less expertise.
“I was surprised that the AI models outperformed all 33 of the expert examiners,” study author Elisabeth Epstein, a professor at the Department of Clinical Science and Education at Karolinska Institutet, told Fox News Digital.
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Ovarian tumors are common and “often detected by chance,” according to Epstein.
“Our study demonstrates that AI-driven diagnostic support can significantly improve ovarian cancer diagnosis by enhancing triage efficiency, reducing diagnostic errors and addressing the shortage of expert examiners,” she said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
The AI model achieved an accuracy rate of 86% for detecting ovarian cancer, compared to 82% for human experts and 77% for those with less expertise. (iStock)
“High-quality diagnostics can become more accessible, particularly in regions with limited access to experienced examiners,” Epstein went on.
“This will help reduce waiting times, avoid unnecessary interventions and facilitate earlier cancer detection, ultimately improving patient outcomes and ensuring more accurate diagnoses.”
AI could also reduce the need for referrals as well as the chances of misdiagnosis, the researchers noted.
“I was surprised that the AI models outperformed all 33 of the expert examiners.”
Dr. Brian Slomovitz, director of gynecologic oncology and co-chair of the Cancer Research Committee at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Florida, noted that screening and early detection of ovarian cancer is the “holy grail” to reduce deaths from this disease.
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“This large retrospective trial clearly demonstrates that there may be a role in incorporating AI-driven support to better interpret ultrasound findings in patients with a pelvic mass,” Slomovitz, who was not involved in this particular study, told Fox News Digital.
“This, by itself, increases the accuracy of the radiologic findings by both decreasing the false positive rate (leading to unnecessary surgeries) and decreasing the false negative rate (missing cases of cancer).”
Screening and early detection of ovarian cancer is the “holy grail” to reduce deaths from this disease, one oncologist noted. (iStock)
There are other ways to evaluate ovarian cancer patients beyond radiology scans, the doctor noted.
“Menopausal status, presence or absence of symptoms, and blood test results are some other factors used to determine which patients may or may not need surgery,” Slomovitz said. “It would be great if these factors could be incorporated into the AI modeling.”
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In addition to showing improved accuracy of ultrasound analysis, the AI technology will need to demonstrate a survival benefit in order to gain widespread use, he added.
“I am optimistic that artificial intelligence will be a part of the armamentarium used to improve the care we offer to our patients.”
“I am optimistic that artificial intelligence will be a part of the armamentarium used to improve the care we offer to our patients,” an oncologist said. (iStock)
Dr. Harvey Castro, a Dallas, Texas-based board-certified emergency medicine physician and national speaker on AI in health care, agreed that the tech has the potential to improve cancer diagnostics, but cautioned that limitations remain.
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“The AI relies on diverse, high-quality data, and bias could limit effectiveness,” he told Fox News Digital.
“It’s also not fully validated for routine clinical use, and transparency and regulatory concerns remain unresolved.”
Castro reiterated that additional research is needed to determine how well AI adapts to real-world settings, the long-term impact on health care costs and outcomes, and whether the tech will be able to handle diverse populations and different clinical environments.
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The researchers also acknowledged the potential limitations of the study.
“It is not a prospective study, so additional data is needed to know how it would perform in a real clinical setting,” Epstein told Fox News Digital.
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The team is planning to soon begin clinical studies at Stockholm South Hospital in Sweden, she added.
“It is still the physician who remains responsible for the patient’s diagnosis and treatment.”
Epstein noted that AI should only be used as a diagnostic support and not a replacement for human physicians.
“It is still the physician who remains responsible for the patient’s diagnosis and treatment,” she stated.
The Karolinska Institutet research team collaborated with the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Funding was provided by the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Cancer Society, the Stockholm Regional Council, the Cancer Research Funds of Radiumhemmet and the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP), according to the release.
A new trend gaining popularity among people trying to lose weight is microdosing the diabetes medication Ozempic.
With approximately 70% of American adults meeting the criteria for being obese or overweight, more people are turning to weight loss medications to help them shed pounds.
Ozempic is approved for type 2 diabetes, while its counterpart, Wegovy, is approved for treating obesity. Both are made by Novo Nordisk.
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Eli Lilly also offers a diabetes medication, Mounjaro, as well as a version for weight loss, Zepbound.
In a new trend, some people are using smaller daily “microdoses” of Ozempic, doctors report. (iStock)
“Ozempic is the only version among the weekly injectables — Ozempic, Wegovy, Zepbound and Mounjaro — that has the option to ‘hack’ the pen for a smaller dose,” Dr. Alexandra Sowa, an obesity medicine specialist and founder of SoWell in New York, told Fox News Digital.
She is also the author of the book “The Ozempic Revolution” that is set to be released on Jan. 7.
Fox News Digital spoke to the experts to get the skinny on this latest trend.
What is microdosing?
Microdosing Ozempic refers to using smaller amounts compared to the standard therapeutic doses that are traditionally prescribed for managing type 2 diabetes and aiding weight loss, experts say.
This practice is not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
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“Health care clinicians do not typically recommend this approach, as the standard dosing regimen is based on clinical trials determining the most effective and safe amount for these conditions,” noted Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, obesity medicine physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
There are no established guidelines for microdosing – although there are reports on social media of using 10 to 100 times lower than standard prescriptions, added Dr. Christopher McGowan, a gastroenterologist and obesity specialist who runs True You Weight Loss in Cary, North Carolina.
“Health care clinicians do not typically recommend this approach.”
Some people get confused by the terminology, the doctors noted.
“I think there’s a little bit of a misconception, as some people say ‘I’m microdosing’ when they’re just on the starting doses or don’t go all the way up in the escalation titration dosing of the medication,” Sowa said.
Benefits of microdosing
The primary reason for microdosing is to reduce costs, according to McGowan.
For example, he said, a patient might think that if a full prescription costs over $250 per week, they may be able to achieve some benefit with just $25 worth of the medication.
With approximately 70% of American adults meeting the criteria for being obese or overweight, more people are turning to weight loss medications to help them shed pounds. (iStock)
The average monthly retail price of Ozempic ranges from $1,000 or more without insurance, per GoodRx.
People may also pursue microdosing to reduce the incidence or severity of side effects such as nausea, vomiting or stomach discomfort, according to Stanford.
“Some individuals might start with microdoses to gradually acclimate their body to the medication, potentially easing into the full therapeutic dose over time,” she said.
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Any potential benefit of the medication, however, will likely wane proportionally with lower doses, experts noted.
Individuals may also microdose due to supply challenges, according to Dr. Amy Rothberg, clinical professor of medicine in the Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology & Diabetes at the University of Michigan.
“Some individuals might start with microdoses to gradually acclimate their body to the medication, potentially easing into the full therapeutic dose over time.” (iStock)
“Some feel they may derive a benefit from microdosing by being able to extend their supply and may perceive an effect,” Rothberg, who is also the medical director of Rewind, a lifestyle program for type 2 diabetes patients, told Fox News Digital. “As we know, the placebo effect may have a strong impact.”
Potential risks of the practice
The most likely risk of microdosing is a lack of effectiveness, McGowan noted.
“Microdosing Ozempic or other [weight-loss] medications is entirely off-label and unproven, with no supporting clinical studies,” he cautioned.
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Stanford also warned that smaller doses may not provide adequate blood sugar management, leading to uncontrolled diabetes and associated complications.
It can also lead to suboptimal weight loss and unpredictable results, as well as the potential for misuse, she added.
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People who microdose often use a “compounded” version of the medication, which the FDA does not regulate.
“This introduces risks such as contamination, inconsistent formulations and uncertainty about the actual strength of the product being injected,” McGowan stated.
Without changes to diet and physical activity patterns, the long-term benefits will disappear once the drug is stopped, one doctor noted. (iStock)
Additionally, these compounded versions are usually dispensed in vials, which requires a syringe to draw it up, in contrast to the FDA-approved versions that are simpler to use.
Using the compounded versions through vials runs the risk of drawing up too much medication — so instead of microdosing, it’s possible to macrodose, Sowa warned.
Medical supervision is key
Some providers are still comfortable offering microdosing for select patients with one caveat — that people should always consult a health care clinician before altering their medication regimen.
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“As long as it is being dispensed and monitored by a physician, I don’t see how anybody is going to overdose, especially when we are giving such small amounts,” Dr. Suzanne A. Trott, a double board-certified plastic and general surgeon in Beverly Hills, told Fox News Digital.
“I have seen a lot of patients who are given metformin for weight loss — I don’t see how this is any different,” said Trott, who runs her own microdosing clinic.
Trott pointed out that there are many “off-label” practices offered to patients.
“Botox and fillers are not even FDA-approved for most of the places we use them,” she noted.
“Some individuals might start with microdoses to gradually acclimate their body to the medication.”
Experts agree that sustained weight loss will not occur with medication alone.
“I think people find that it’s easier to take a drug, but neglect concomitant behavioral changes,” Rothberg said.
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In the absence of changes to diet and physical activity patterns, the long-term benefits will disappear once the drug is stopped, she noted.
Trott also recommends maintaining consistent exercise, strength training, hydration and high protein intake to maintain muscle mass.
Fox News Digital reached out to Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic, for comment.
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