Haiti - Seasonal Monitor: Vegetation health affected by dry conditions (September 2, 2026) - ReliefWeb

1. Talk With Your Doctor or Healthcare ProviderBecause SAD is a form of depression, it needs to be addressed by a mental health professional. “There are a number of screening questions that can help determine if someone is depressed,” says Deborah Pierce, MD, a family medicine physician at University of Rochester Medicine in New York. “Your doctor will be able to sort out whether you have SAD as opposed to some other form of depression.” If you have SAD, a professional can help you identify the condition and work through it. Psychotherapy (aka talk therapy), including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), can effectively treat SAD. Therapy can help you learn new ways to cope and change thinking and behavioral patterns that exacerbate depression symptoms.2. Ready Yourself in the FallPreparation for the summer-to-fall transition isn’t limited to wardrobe updates or getting your home ready for the new season — consider preparing your mind, too. Regularly allotting time for mood-boosting activities can help people feel physically and psychologically healthier, says Kim Burgess, PhD, a clinical psychologist at Naval Health Clinic Quantico in Virginia.

Seasonal depression often surfaces in the fall and winter, but therapists say proactive measures can significantly reduce the severity of symptoms. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is brought on by the changing seasons. It can be an overwhelming, jarring type of depression. Most people, when first dealing with it, aren’t sure how to cope with seasonal depression. They begin feeling sapped of energy and interest during the fall, and their condition continues to worsen as winter progresses. The depressive symptoms typically self-resolve during the springtime and remain minimal throughout the summer months. It is also important to remember that winter depression or winter blues is a lesser form of SAD.

Bioengineer.org news storyFor millions of people living with HIV, antiretroviral therapy has transformed a once-fatal infection into a manageable chronic condition. Yet the very drugs that suppress the virus can carry quiet costs, and one of the most insidious is bone loss. Tenofovir disoproxil fumarate, or TDF, has been a cornerstone of HIV treatment worldwide for two decades, prized for its potency, durability, and low cost. But a growing body of evidence has linked TDF exposure to measurable reductions in bone mineral density, raising an increasingly urgent clinical question: once bone has been lost on a TDF-based regimen, can it be recovered? A new prospective cohort study, published in BMC Infectious Diseases, offers some of the most detailed longitudinal evidence to date that the answer, for many patients, is yes. The research team enrolled 223 virologically suppressed men living with HIV who had low bone mineral density while taking TDF-based antiretroviral therapy.

The new treatment kills off a sub-group of fat cells. (Jian Fan/iStockphoto/Getty Images) Early clinical trials into a new fat reduction treatment have reported promising results, and the treatment takes a more unusual approach: Rather than shrinking fat cells, as most weight loss strategies do, it safely and naturally kills them off. The drug here is CBL-514, which is administered via injection. As well as proving effective at reducing subcutaneous fat (just below the skin), there's evidence it can also reduce visceral fat (stored deeper around the organs). According to the team behind the trials, CBL-514 and its unconventional strategy have the potential to reduce fat in key areas of the body – with further benefits that come with weight loss likely to follow. "We expect that patients will be pleased by the cosmetic effects, such as the flatter stomach that can come with subcutaneous fat loss," says endocrinologist Timothy Garvey, from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who headed up the trial.