Health

Another Study Finds E-Cigs May Contain Formaldehyde

Science is back with more sobering news about vaping. A letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine claims that vapor produced by electronic cigarettes contains a high concentration of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen. But don’t panic quite yet. These types of experiments tend to be pretty controversial and basically divisive. We already knew…

This Ingestible Microbot Is Powered By Stomach Acid 

There’s tiny revolution afoot in medicine, where micro- and nano-sized robots will someday cruise around inside our bodies, zeroing in on cancerous cells or repairing damaged but otherwise healthy ones. But before those ideas all become reality, those bots need a power source inside our bodies. That power source could be stomach acid. Scientists at…

A Health-Tracking App Analyzed My Blood and Told Me I’m 31 Going on 54

It sounds like a pretty damn good deal: Pay a hundred bucks for a blood test and get five simple personalized nutrition tips that promise to add years to your life. Sold! I tried it. And I found, as with any data-based health app, its claims need to be taken with a hulking heap of…

This Chart Shows The Worst Diseases That Don’t Get Enough Research Money

Do the diseases that claim the most years of our lives really get the most research funding? This chart takes on that question — and reveals which diseases we may need to focus more on. The chart is the work of Catherine Richards a staff scientist at the Hutchinson Institute for Cancer Outcomes Research on…

How A Daily 20-Minute Walk Could Save Your Life

We know that exercise is important to our health, but a recent study of 334,161 European men and women shows that as little as 20 minutes of brisk walking a day could prevent us from dying prematurely. What this new Cambridge University study is essentially saying is that inactivity is bad. Real bad. And that…

Here’s Why More Schools Should Schedule Recess Before Lunch

A study published in the latest issue of Preventive Medicine found that when recess is held right before lunch instead of immediately after, the amount of fruits and vegetables eaten by students increases by more than 50%. The NYT’s KJ Dell’Antonia has more details at Motherlode: Research has long suggested that students who have recess…

A Door-Bottom Filter Keeps Your Neighbors’ Smells Out of Your Apartment

When you live in an apartment or a condo not only do you have to put up with noisy neighbors, you also have to deal with their smells sneaking into your home via the hallway. A draft blocker is one way to seal off the crack at the bottom of your front door, but those…

Incredible CT Scans Show What’s Happening Inside A Body In Motion

The next wave of CT scanners combines motion correction technology and organ-wide coverage to limit radiation exposure — while also obtaining hi-res images of soft tissue, organs and bones as they move within the body. Translation: They can acquire remarkable images of your insides in motion. Here’s the proof. Above: A high-definition image of the…

A Rub-On Tattoo for Diabetics Could Mean the End of Finger Pricking 

Pricking your finger for a blood glucose test will never, ever be fun. Thankfully, scientists have been hard at work on a bloodless and needleless alternative: a rub-on temporary tattoo that, as weird as it sounds, gently sucks glucose through the surface of the skin. The thin, flexible device created by nanoengineers at UCSD is…

A Special Font to Help Dyslexics? More Like Snake Oil.

The marketers for a typeface called “Dyslexie” claim the font can make reading “easy and enjoyable for people with dyslexia.” The reasoning behind the font’s design is intriguing. But before you get too excited — the scientific evidence supporting Dyslexie’s usefulness is far from conclusive. Created by Dutch designer Christian Boer, Dyslexie has been around…

The U.S. Experiences One of the Worst Flu And Cold Seasons In Years

On any given day last month, an average of 4% of Americans said they were sick with the flu and 11.6% said they had a cold. That’s the highest these figures have ever been since Gallup first starting keeping track back in 2008. Typically, reports of the flu are highest in January or February. So…

What’s The Difference Between An Outbreak And An Epidemic?

More than 8,000 people have died from Ebola in West Africa since February 2014 and it has spread beyond the three countries initially affected. So, it’s an epidemic, right? Or is it an outbreak? Photo Credit: Bobby Yip/Reuters What about H1N1? The 2009 pandemic infected people around the world. But, so did the SARS epidemic…

We Found a New Antibiotic, And Better Yet, a New Way to Find Antibiotics

Amidst the onslaught of bad news about antibiotic resistance, here is something good: Scientists have found a new class of antibiotics in soil bacteria, one whose mechanism could make it particularly resistant to resistance. More significant than this single new antibiotic, though, is how scientists found it. In the good old days of the early…

Early Start-Times Are Robbing You Of Sleep

Everyone knows quality sleep is important, but getting more of it can be difficult. A growing body of evidence suggests early start-times for work and education may be to blame. The latest findings to link early start times to poor sleep hygiene appear in the January issue of the journalSleep. A team led by Mathias…

A new study could explain why we often get sick when it’s cold outside. Researchers have learned that the virus for the common cold replicates more efficiently at cooler temperatures — especiallyinside our noses. The finding suggests we should keep our nose warm and avoid cold air when we’re infected. Photo: vesna cvorovic/Shutterstock.

A Smart EpiPen Case Lets Family Know You’re Having an Allergy Attack

Anyone dealing with severe allergies always carries an EpiPen. In an emergency it provides an injectable dose of epinephrine to narrow blood vessels and open airways to help minimize the dangerous symptoms of an allergy attack, and when used with the new Veta casethat’s designed to safely store the EpiPen, it can automatically let your…

New Weight Loss Drug Mimics The Effects Of Eating An Entire Meal

Researchers at the Salk Institute have developed a new weight loss pill that tricks the body into believing it has consumed calories, which then triggers a fat-burning response. The compound, called fexaramine, has only been tested on obese and diabetic mice, but the results of the experiment are so promising that human trials are next.…

Polar’s A300 Is a Solid Fitness Tracker You Shouldn’t Buy

Polar has come a long way since its first fitness tracker, the Polar Loop, launched in 2013. Just months ago the Finnish company released the Polar M400, a lovely and capable GPS running watch with 24/7 fitness tracking capabilities. It was sweet enough to earn a coveted spot on our Best Fitness Trackers list. Today,…

What Is a Heat-Not-Burn Cigarette and Can It Help You Quit?

The Next Big Trend in vaping is actually a very old idea: cigarettes that heat tobacco to produce an inhalable aerosol, but never reach the point of combustion, thus avoiding that sketchy part of smoking where you light something on fire and suck the smoke into your lungs. How is that any different than the…

What Vitamins to Take, What to Skip, and How to Know the Difference

Wandering into any conversation about vitamins and other health supplements is wandering into a thicket of hyperbole and half-truths. We’re here to cut through some of the bullshit in the $28 billion supplements industry. The biggest fallacy we need to let go of is that all vitamins are good, and more vitamins is always better.…