Beth Urban

Beth Goldfarb Urban. Registered Dietitian (RD), Certified Dietitian/Nutritionist (CDN) Certified Diabetic Educator (CDE), RunJunkEe, Marathoner, Ultramarathoner

[Beth Urban @burbanrd]

Sri Chinmoy #SunsetHalfMarathon

[Beth Urban @burbanrd]

I am doing a sunset 1/2 marathon tomorrow. It’s going to be ~80’s in the evening. I’ve done this course before (22 loops) and will do 4 loops + a short out and back. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow

[Nature Unedited @NatureUnedited]

This dog takes advantage of someone washing their car to use the brush

[Antidepressant Content @depressionlesss]

No matter how many times you've watched it, Max the dog playing with his duck friend Fred never fails to make your day

[Beth Urban @burbanrd]

Got out again this morning for a few miles.

[Beth Urban @burbanrd]

The heat & humidity was evil today

[Sandra Frank, EdD, RDN, FAND @DietitianOnline]

Gardening is therapeutic, builds muscles, & burns calories. Gardening activities work your muscles and burn calories, including weeding, digging, spading, planting, pruning, mowing, raking, and walking. A wonderful way to grow your own food while on the move. #GardeningExercise

[Beth Urban @burbanrd]

@MelindaHoward4 @NitaSweeney So what were your issues with it?

[Beth Urban @burbanrd]

@MelindaHoward4 Hope you’re feeling better soon

[Beth Urban @burbanrd]

I found out what was screwing with our hummingbird feeders

[Sandra Frank, EdD, RDN, FAND @DietitianOnline]

Meet our fruity dragon! Bananas, blueberries, and strawberries come together for a magical snack that sparks creativity and smiles. Healthy eating can be playful too! Which mythical creature should join our fruit kingdom next? #Momtasty

[Sandra Frank, EdD, RDN, FAND @DietitianOnline]

Never Too Late to Live Your Best Life – Ageless and Awesome! National Senior Health and Fitness Day #OlderAmericanMonth #Fitness #Health #SeniorHealthandFitnessDay https://t.co/a3g5Wlp2Dm

[Sandra Frank, EdD, RDN, FAND @DietitianOnline]

Fruit Skewer Party Friends Bright, colorful, and full of fun! These playful fruit skewers with strawberries, grapes, kiwi, oranges, bananas, and cheese cubes make the perfect party snack or cheerful family treat. #HealthySnacks #FoodArt by @Kitchenplate

[David Dack @DavidDack]

I hate when people ask if a 6-hour marathon is “good.”

You ran 26.2 miles.

That alone puts you ahead of almost everyone who will never even try.

And somehow you’re still wondering if it counts?

Stop that.

You don’t need permission to be proud of finishing something most people are too scared to start.

A faster marathon is faster.

Sure.

But a 6-hour marathon still asks for training, patience, pain, fuel, stubbornness, and a very long conversation with your legs.

That finish line is not fake because the clock took longer.

[Beth Urban @burbanrd]

@MelindaHoward4 Thank you. It’s been a while since I was able to get close to 2 hrs for 10 miles.

[Beth Urban @burbanrd]

The rain eased up long enough for me to get my long run in. Half marathon in 3 weeks!

[Elias Al @iam_elias1]

ChatGPT diagnosed 40 million people with a disease that was invented as a joke.

Not a real disease. Not a misunderstood disease. A completely fictional condition with a fake name, fake papers, and fake statistics.

And it told patients to see a specialist.

The disease is called Bixonimania. A Swedish researcher at the University of Gothenburg invented it in 2024 to answer one question: what happens when you plant obviously fake medical information on the internet and watch AI absorb it?

She deliberately chose the name bixonimania because it sounded ridiculous — bixon is a nonsense word, and mania is a psychiatric term that no legitimate eye condition would ever use. She uploaded two papers to a preprint server. Both were obviously fraudulent. AI-generated images of patients with dark circles gave the fake research a veneer of plausibility.

Then she waited.

She did not have to wait long.

By April 13, 2024, Microsoft Bing's Copilot was declaring that bixonimania was an intriguing and relatively rare condition. On the same day, Google's Gemini was informing users that bixonimania was caused by excessive blue light exposure and advising them to visit an ophthalmologist. Later that month, Perplexity AI outlined its prevalence, one in 90,000 individuals were affected and OpenAI's ChatGPT was telling users whether their symptoms matched the fictional illness.

One in 90,000. A precise statistic. For a disease that does not exist.

Every red flag was visible. The name was absurd. The papers were crude. The condition made no scientific sense. None of the AI systems flagged any of it.

They read the fake papers. They absorbed the fake statistics. They presented both to patients with clinical authority and zero hesitation.

Then it got worse.

Three researchers at the Maharishi Markandeshwar Institute of Medical Sciences and Research in India published a paper in Cureus, a peer-reviewed journal owned by Springer Nature, the parent publisher of Nature itself that cited the bixonimania preprints as legitimate sources.

A real peer-reviewed paper. In a Springer Nature journal. Citing a fictional disease as established medical fact. Passing editorial review. Entering the permanent scientific record.

It was only retracted after the hoax became public.

Nature published a full investigation of the experiment. Alex Ruani, a health-misinformation researcher at University College London, called it a masterclass in how misinformation operates.

Here is the scale of what this means.

More than 40 million people turn to ChatGPT every day for health information, according to OpenAI's own analysis. ECRI, a US patient-safety nonprofit has named chatbot misuse the number-one health technology hazard of 2026. ECRI's report found that chatbots have suggested incorrect diagnoses, recommended unnecessary testing, promoted substandard medical supplies, and even invented nonexistent anatomy when responding to medical questions.

Number one. Out of every health technology hazard that exists in 2026.

An April 2026 study published in BMJ Open found that nearly half of the answers provided by leading AI chatbots to common health questions contain misleading or problematic information.

Nearly half. Of all health answers. From the tools 40 million people use every day.

Here is the line from the researcher that cuts through everything.

The Bixonimania case is striking precisely because it was engineered to be so obviously fake. The real question it raises is: what is passing through the same systems that is not nearly so easy to spot?

The experiment used a ridiculous name. Fraudulent papers. Visible red flags at every level.

It was designed to be caught.

It was not caught.

The AI that told patients about Bixonimania is the same AI they asked about their chest pain, their medication, their child's symptoms, and their cancer screening schedule.

40 million people. Every day.

And nobody is telling them that nearly half of what comes back may be wrong.

Source: Osmanovic Thunström · University of Gothenburg · Nature · April 2026 ·

Link in the (comments)

[Beth Urban @burbanrd]

@MelindaHoward4 Aww, so sweet

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

In 1935, two American doctors examined seven women's ovaries and saw small lumps. They called them cysts and named the disease after them. They were wrong. It took 91 years to fix.

What we called PCOS is now Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (PMOS), announced today in The Lancet by an international panel of doctors and patients. The renaming followed more than a decade of consensus work and 22,000 patient and clinician survey responses.

The lumps Stein and Leventhal saw were never cysts. Modern imaging shows they were follicles, the tiny sacs inside the ovary that grow and release an egg each month, frozen partway through by a hormonal imbalance. PMOS is a multi-system disorder centered in the endocrine system, the body's network of glands that produces hormones like insulin (controls blood sugar), cortisol (the stress hormone), and thyroid hormones (set the body's metabolism). The ovary trouble flows downstream from there.

The naming choice is not academic. When doctors hear "ovary" in a diagnosis, they look at the ovary. "Metabolic" and "endocrine" send them to the whole body.

PMOS affects roughly 1 in 8 women worldwide, more than 170 million people. The WHO estimates 70% have never been diagnosed. Among those who do, 1 in 3 wait more than 2 years, and nearly half see 3 or more doctors first. The CDC reports more than half of women with PMOS develop type 2 diabetes by age 40, a risk 5 to 10 times higher than women without the condition. Around 37% have clinically significant depression, compared with 14% in women without it. Anxiety runs at 42% versus 8.5%.

A label born from a 1935 look at seven ovaries is finally going away. The new diagnostic guidelines roll out fully in 2028. By then, a woman walking into a clinic with these symptoms should hear questions about her blood sugar and her mood alongside her cycle. Those are the parts of the disease the old name hid for 91 years.