Heart disease may be the world’s leading cause of death, but cancer is the planet’s No.1 “economic killer,” according to a report this week from the American Cancer Society. The AP reports: Cancer’s economic toll was $895 billion in 2008 — equivalent to 1.5 percent of the world’s gross domestic product, the report says. That’s [...]
Chocolate can certainly make you feel better, and the evidence continues to grow that it may do the body good as well — but only, natch, in moderation. Researchers in Boston and Stockholm found that women in a large Swedish study who consumed one to two servings of chocolate a week enjoyed a 32% lower [...]
A protein known for its role in Rett syndrome — a rare genetic brain disorder — also works to regulate cocaine addiction, new research shows. In a study published today in Nature Neuroscience, Florida researchers were able to mimic in rats a human’s transition to cocaine addiction: the transition, that is, from controlled intake of [...]
There’s been a big hubbub this past week about antibiotics. After Lancet Infectious Diseases reported the spread of a new drug-resistant superbug spreading from south Asia, news agencies around the world reported “panic” and “fear and loathing” over the germs’ possible consequences. Some experts claimed the news was overblown –that the new bug was no [...]
It’s summer, so with luck you didn’t spend all weekend indoors glued to the screen. In case you missed these headlines when they broke, here are the biggest health stories of the past two days: Plan C. The FDA approved a new emergency-contraception pill on Friday. Unlike the existing Plan B, this latest drug — [...]
When two journalists discovered that formaldehyde was the miracle agent behind their sleek hair-dos, they decided to dig a little further into their beauty products’ ingredient lists. What they found was terrifying. That lipstick? That mascara? All full of toxic chemicals, as it turns out.
Yet another new study — this one is in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine — is showing a link between asthma and acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. Researchers have found that, among 320,000 kids in 50 countries, 13- and 14-year-olds who take acetaminophen are more than twice as likely to have asthma [...]
Pricey drugs to reduce blood pressure appear no better at preventing heart disease than cheap, generic diuretics, which have been around for decades. This is the result of a 13-year study of roughly 33,000 Americans who use anti-hypertensive drugs. The hypertension patients were randomly assigned in the 1990s to receive either a diuretic (a water [...]
The Internet’s a-buzz with news of Ron Sveden, the 75-year-old Cape Cod man who discovered that a growth in his lung was not, as feared, a tumor — but rather a pea plant. A seed had somehow lodged itself in his lung, presumably after some food found its way down the wrong tube, and the [...]
