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Sometimes, in especially intense moments in the emergency room, a staffer might have to take the drastic step of physically restraining a patient who is in mental health crisis. ER staffers themselves have described it as an exceedingly difficult process, rife with the tension between providing good care and feeling physically threatened. And it raises questions that providers alone can’t answer: How does a patient feel during the experience, and how does that affect a person’s care and recovery? To begin to answer those questions, researchers at Yale interviewed 25 patients who had been restrained in two urban ERs about their experiences. Their findings — published Friday in JAMA Network Open — shed light on the range of the patients’ perspectives. (Thielking, 1/24)

As the owner of a yellow lab named Gus, author Maria Goodavage has had many occasions to bathe her pooch when he rolls around in smelly muck at the park. Nevertheless, her appreciation for his keen sense of smell has inspired her write best-selling books about dogs with special assignments in the military and the U.S. Secret Service. (Schumann, 1/25)

Ohana Biosciences is hoping an emphasis on improving sperm quality and motility will ultimately improve in vitro fertilization or perhaps help even people without fertility issues have healthier pregnancies or children. It’s one of a number of “add-on” fertility treatments that have grown increasingly popular with investors in recent years. Ohana’s science is still in very early stages — its first clinical trial only launched in September. And experts caution that it’s still not clear that sperm has a long-term contribution to the health of either a pregnancy or a child. Ohana will have to fill that literature out if it hopes to win over skeptics — which the company’s CEO, Amber Salzman, believes it can do.“We have a deep understanding of sperm like nobody else,” Salzman told STAT. “We really are the gurus of sperm.” (Sheridan, 1/27)

He ate, played and learned like any other kid. But David Vetter’s life unfolded in a series of unusual environments: plastic, bubblelike enclosures that protected him from germs. He had severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), and even a seemingly harmless germ could kill him. The subject of pop culture scrutiny and medical fascination, David was called “the boy in the bubble” by the media. SCID is rare and often fatal; it affects about 1 in 58,000 infants. (Blakemore, 1/25)

Piedmont Healthcare executives, supply chain experts and clinicians huddled the night of Jan. 12 to mitigate one of the biggest supply chain disruptions the health system has encountered. They had just gotten word that their primary supplier of surgical gowns, Cardinal Health, distributed potentially contaminated products. Around half of Atlanta-based Piedmont's 11 hospitals were affected. (Kacik, 1/24)

For Americans who live in communities where prospects for economic advancement are scant, life is not only bleak — it’s shorter too. New research has found that people who live in counties with more opportunities to improve their lot in life can expect to live longer than those who live in counties where it’s virtually impossible to get ahead. (Healy, 1/24)

When Keanu Reeves walked into a Los Angeles gala holding hands with artist Alexandra Grant, fans applauded the 55-year-old actor for choosing an “age appropriate” romantic partner. Most striking about Grant, 46, was her steel-gray hair. Why wasn’t she coloring it? In an Instagram post, she explained: In her 20s, she began graying, and she covered it with various shades of dye until she could no longer tolerate the chemicals. (Cohen, 1/26)

Their December 2017 meeting was winding down when Albuquerque neurologist David R. Smith III decided to say something. His lawyer, Cid Lopez, looked very ill — much worse than he had a few months earlier. His skin had the grayish pallor common to cancer patients, he had dark circles under his eyes and had lost so much weight that his cheeks were sunken. What, Smith gently inquired, was wrong? (Boodman, 1/25)

Picky kids know what they like, and that’s usually pizza or chicken nuggets. Getting them to eat more fruits and veggies is always a challenge, parents and experts say. Now some worry that it will be even harder to get children to try healthier options if the Trump administration moves ahead with a plan to loosen school nutrition guidelines. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced the proposed changes during a stop in Texas last week, saying they will allow schools to curb food waste and have more flexibility in what they serve.Among the changes, schools would have more say in the types of fruits and vegetables they serve. Pasta, for example, could count as a vegetable if made from vegetable flour. More potatoes could be offered at breakfast. (Ayala, 1/27)