Conventional gym etiquette involves carefully wiping down the surfaces of any machines or equipment after using it. Businesses usually provide customers with wet wipes, or simple sprays and towels, to keep faux leather padding and other public surfaces pristine and sanitary.

But during professional events, that level of cleanliness isn’t always guaranteed. Organizers of a recent Hyrox competition in China, the spiritual successor of the Crossfit craze, have been accused of allowing participants be exposed to a trail of human waste — left behind, memorably, by the athlete who went on to win the competition.

As The Guardian reports, Australian world record holder Joanna Wietrzyk used shared stations, including rowing machines, sleds, and medicine balls, while “faecal matter” was “visibly running down her legs,” a horrifying incident vaguely reminiscent of one of the most infamous and reviled videos in internet history.

The incident drew an outburst of disgust across social media.

“I guess I’m never doing a Hyrox event,” one user wrote in a post on Bluesky. “Oh my god.”

“Saw a big Hyrox poster at the gym and all I thought of was that lady shitting herself,” another tweeted. “That’s their brand now.”

“This should result in a hard stop for the competitor because the public health risk is more important than the medal,” one user argued. “Hyrox has way too many shared touch points and surfaces to let this continue.”

Others used the opportunity to poke fun.

“A s****y situation for all parties and tough for Hyrox to save faeces,” another joked.

Organizers were criticized for allowing the competition to continue despite having clear bio-contaminant rules in place.

“Protocols designed for elite competition and mass participation became blurred, creating ambiguity in how they were applied and understood,” Hyrox World wrote in an statement, in one of the more acrobatic euphemisms we can recall.

Hyrox cofounder Moritz Fürste issued an apology on Instagram as well.

“Hyrox made a mistake by not reacting immediately during the race,” he wrote. “In the end it is my job to foresee these potential incidents — and I did not.”

“Of course, we started improving event processes,” Fürste went on, “plus making rulebook changes immediately.”

The shocking incident highlights the fact that professional endurance athletes soiling themselves isn’t as rare as it may seem. Long distance runners, for instance, are known to suffer from “runner’s diarrhea,” like Paula Radcliffe, who had to relieve herself in full view of the public during the 2005 London marathon.

Radcliffe still won with a time of 2:17:42 — albeit with a little less dignity than she started.

More on athletes: They Held a New Olympics Where Athletes Can Take as Many Drugs and Steroids as They Want, and the Funniest Possible Thing Happened

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Here’s a hazard you probably didn’t expect from too much screen time.

Two doctors in the UK reported in the journal BMJ Case Reports the bizarre case of a young boy whose laptop literally toasted his skin over weeks and maybe even months of using it. Thankfully, the kid’s fine and was never in any real pain, so we can dive into this medical oddity without feeling too guilty about it.

According to the eyebrow-raising paper, spotted by Ars Technica, the boy was first brought into an emergency department with reddish markings over his abdomen in a lace-like pattern. Nurses first described it as “spontaneous bruising,” but they didn’t find skin abnormalities anywhere else on his body. The boy also wasn’t in any pain, and didn’t have any history of trauma or illnesses that could explain the markings.

When doctors did a chest x-ray, they found some kind of build up in his lung, though it was unclear what it signified. The boy admitted that he got pushed into a chair while play-fighting with his siblings a week ago, leading the doctors to search for signs of a traumatic injury. But after a CT scan, they didn’t find any. They weren’t completely sure of what was going on, but the doctors discharged him with antibiotics for a suspected lung infection.

The boy was back several weeks later, though — and the rash was even worse. Parts of his abdomen were pinkish, exhibiting clear signs of skin breakdown, the doctors wrote, with mottled patches of dark brown. (You can view a photo, at your own peril, here, via Ars.)

That’s when the doctors began to suspect some kind of heat damage. But when they asked the boy about heat sources, nothing turned up. 

Then, as they continued to question him, the boy mentioned something crucial: he was home-schooled and did most of his assignments on his laptop, sometimes for eight hours a day, often while charging. And of course, he usually rested the laptop on his torso while lying down.

This supported a diagnosis of a erythema ab igne (EAI), also known as “toasted skin syndrome.” It’s caused by repeated, close exposure to low heat, which slowly damages the skin over time. Patients often get it from heat pads and space heaters, but a warm laptop can cause it, too. It causes a distinctly lace-like rash, which explained the boy’s symptoms.

EAI is benign, and in most cases, its rashes disappear on their own once exposure to a heat source is stopped, taking weeks to months to heal. Once properly diagnosed, the boy’s rash was dressed, and he came back to the hospital several months later to confirm that he had fully healed. Now that he’s okay, he might try studying at a desk instead.

More on medical oddities: Man Announces That He Has Synthesized a New Schizophrenia Treatment in His Garage, Based on a Formula Devised by ChatGPT

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The myriad horrors of the US healthcare system have spawned generations of medical tourism from the wealthiest country on Earth to the periphery: Cuba, Mexico, Costa Rica, Canada, Turkey, and Thailand, to name just a few.

Now, Shanghai is quickly rising as one of the top destinations for cancer patients, as China’s biotech sector has spun an experimental treatment developed in the US into a standalone industry.

New reporting by the Wall Street Journal took a look at this fast-growth industry, centered around chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, or CAR-T for short.

CAR-T is essentially a personalized form of immunotherapy, in which a patient’s own white blood cells are engineered to identify and attack specific proteins found in cancer cells. Though the process was first developed by US biotech giants, their inability — or unwillingness — to lower the cost and increase supply of the treatment has led to shortages throughout the country.

That’s where China comes in. As director of the CAR-T program at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston Sairah Ahmed told the WSJ, this therapy can cost around $150,000 to $230,000 in China — still a life-altering bill, but a sizeable discount compared to an insurmountable $550,000 to $850,000 in the US.

This, Ahmed says, is why she advises some patients to seek out treatment in the People’s Republic.

“China has basically done to CAR-T cell therapy the same thing that it’s done to other industries, which is, they’ve industrialized it,” Ahmed explained.

China’s CAR-T services aren’t just cheaper, either. They’re also faster, and come with a host of complimentary after-care treatments, the WSJ notes. As MD Anderson Cancer Center’s explainer on CAR-T therapy advises, the process of extracting and bio-engineering a patient’s cells to fight cancer can take over three weeks in the US. Compare that to China, where the WSJ reports labs near Shanghai can “crank out” the therapy in just a matter of days.

An important caveat here is that CAR-T cell therapy isn’t a catch-all for every type of cancer, and it’s typically only administered after other treatments have failed. It’s not exactly a walk in the park, either, requiring months of recovery and check-ups from a range of physical, neurological, and psychological health specialists. Still, if you had to go through with it, your first step should clearly be pricing out some flights to China.

More on healthcare: Bougie Health Startups Offering Full-Body Diagnostic Scans for Rich People While the Rest of Us Suffer a Crumbling Healthcare System

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GLP-1 weight loss drugs are changing lives in more ways than one.

In a new piece for The Guardian, the newspaper’s readers share how the weight loss journey that drugs like Wegovy, Ozempic, and Mounjaro have set them down on have drastically affected their interpersonal relationships — sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse. 

Many of the GLP-1 users seem to harbor a sense of shame, hiding their use of the drugs. In their minds — and perhaps in the minds of those around them — they undermine the sense of accomplishment that comes with losing weight the old fashioned way, instead feeling that they “cheated” or are “being dishonest” about how they achieved their goals. 

One parent wrote of how their 20-year-old daughter felt “worried, angry, and jealous” after she discovered they were hiding their use of Wegovy from her. “We had discussed weight, identity and GLP-1s, but I was so ashamed of going on it that I didn’t want to tell anyone,” they wrote, noting how food was a “huge part of our family life.” They wondered to themselves: “What kind of signal am I giving her and her brothers?” 

Though they feel “mostly positive” about losing nearly thirty pounds using the drug, they added, they also can’t shake the feeling that they’re “cheating.”

“So much of my insecurity about my weight and appearance is offloaded on to an injectable pen,” they added.

Another wrote that despite their friends feeling pleased about their weight loss, they’ve kept their GLP-1 drugs secret for nearly two years. Their partner, they believe, “has felt insecure at times because of my glow-up.”

“I don’t want people to think I’ve cheated. I guess there is still fat shame somewhere,” they wrote.

Others don’t feel this guilt, but are frustrated that their spouses don’t realize how transformative the drugs have been for them. One complained that their husband was so unsupportive of their use of GLP-1s that they no longer could share their experience with him.

“This has been a life-changing drug so far, and I can’t share it with the person I’m closest with,” they lamented. 

Though they’ve struggled with obesity their whole life, their “husband scoffs at characterizing obesity as a chronic and recurring disease” and “thinks people should just make better lifestyle choices and stop making excuses — which tells me a lot about how he views me, too.”

These downsides aren’t unique to GLP-1s. Significant weight loss has long been linked to divorce, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that someone who’s slimmed down is now feeling their oats. Weight loss can come with dramatic changes to a person’s lifestyle — from the food they eat and the exercise they do to how they socialize — and that can be a lot for someone close to them to adjust to.

“Relationships tend to develop a sense of equilibrium and predictability over time,” Lindsey Berisha, a clinical psychologist who’s worked with patients using GLP-1s for over a decade, told The Guardian. “When one partner undergoes a significant change, it can shift that equilibrium, and even positive change can create uncertainty for both partners.”

GLP-1s, of course, have made achieving this kind of significant weight loss much more accessible, which is why we’re now starting to hear about “Ozempic divorces.”

More on GLP-1s: GLP-1 Drugs Appear to Prevent Cancer, New Research Finds

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