A couple weeks ago I wrote about whether prevention can really cut health-care costs. Given America’s troubling chronic-disease rates, however, a more pertinent question might be this: Can health-care workers actually implement prevention on behalf of their patients? Sure, there’s cancer screening and annual check-ups. But that’s not …
It’s one of humanity’s longest-standing questions: How long can we live? Even the Bible weighs in. But people, on the whole, seem to be natural pessimists when it comes to the answer. Time after time, experts have estimated a maximum possible life expectancy that any human population could achieve. Time after time, we’ve exceeded it. …
With a single well-timed injection, scientists show they can erase a bad memory from the mind of a rat.
For their remarkable finding, researchers from Brazil and Argentina gave electric shocks to rats and then tested how long the animals remembered and tried to avoid shocks in the future. The researchers showed that rats will quickly …
When it comes to pandemic flu, the best strategy for the U.S. is not to vaccinate those at highest risk of illness, but rather to vaccinate those at highest risk of transmission. That’s the best way to protect the country’s most vulnerable people, according to a new study published today in the journal Science. The theory goes: If you …
If you’re a runner, odds are pretty good that you’ve been injured at some point in the last year or two. Journalist Christopher McDougall has an interesting and no doubt controversial explanation. It’s your shoes, he says. There’s too much of them: too much cushioning, too much arch support, too much stabilization, too much …
Long-time heroin addicts who get supervised doses of the drug seem to stay in addiction treatment longer and have less criminal activity than similar addicts who get conventional methadone treatment. That’s the finding of a randomized controlled trial published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers from two …
Burning everyday paraffin-wax candles can emit a storm of toxic chemicals, including toluene and benzene, according to a study presented today to the American Chemical Society. To be sure, it’s nowhere near as harmful to light an occasional candle as it would be, say, to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. But the researchers say that …
When nurses reach out to their cancer patients by phone, those patients on average report higher quality of life and better mood, even if their symptoms are no better than other patients’. The finding comes from a new report published in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association. New Hampshire researchers tested a simple …
A full 36.7% of homeowners in foreclosure meet the screening criteria for major depression, according to a new study released today in the American Journal of Public Health. A further 10.2% suffer from minor depression, the study finds.
The result comes from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, who surveyed 250 …
Nutritionists say whole grains are good for you because they contain a lot of fiber. Now, new research shows they’re also packed full of polyphenol antioxidants — substances that help to rid your body of harmful free radicals, highly reactive molecules and ions that can damage your cells.
You’ve probably heard good things about …
The U.S. Army plans to give every one of its soldiers mental stress training, according to today’s New York Times. The training is meant to address troubling levels of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder among soldiers and ex-soldiers. The Army suicide rate has continued to climb this year, with suicides even exceeding combat …
Some 100,000 kids end up in U.S. emergency rooms each year because they’ve accidentally been poisoned. No, they’re not all raiding the cupboard full of cleaning supplies. Close to 70% of those visits are from are overdoses of everyday over-the-counter drugs or prescription medications, according to a recent study by researchers at the …
Boston-area researchers have developed a new technique to identify chemicals that kill cancer stem cells — the part of a cancer that drives tumor growth. A common problem with current chemotherapy treatments is that they knock back a cancer successfully, only for the tumor to re-grow later because, it seems, the all-important stem …