Right after residency, I took a summer job in a family practice in a beach town on Long Island, covering Fridays and weekends for the regular doctors. The setting was quite different from my training in an urban hospital. It was a bit of a culture shock to go from a world of critically ill [...]

 

Right after residency, I took a summer job in a family practice in a beach town on Long Island, covering Fridays and weekends for the regular doctors. The setting was quite different from my training in an urban hospital. It was a bit of a culture shock to go from a world of critically ill [...]

Instead of asking how much exercise we need, some scientists are looking into how little we can do and still get maximal health and fitness benefits. The answer appears to be a lot less than most of us think — provided we’re willing to put in some effort. That’s the secret behind high-intensity interval training, [...]

Instead of asking how much exercise we need, some scientists are looking into how little we can do and still get maximal health and fitness benefits. The answer appears to be a lot less than most of us think — provided we’re willing to put in some effort. That’s the secret behind high-intensity interval training, [...]

 

Seamus McKiernan In the midst of a medical crisis, I found myself preoccupied by a social media question: To share or not to share? In the world of social media, we are our own self-portraitists. Our digital identity is doctored to show the best version of our lives. (Maybe a more apt name for Facebook [...]

 

Joe Paull/The Ledger-Enquirer, via Associated Press New research has found that younger athletes and those who are female show more symptoms and take longer to recover from a concussion than athletes who are male or older. During a soccer game two years ago, Megan Wirtz, a goalie for her high school team, was bending down [...]

 

Getty Images Concerns about bone drugs were prompted by rare reports of an unusual thigh fracture. In an unusual move that may prompt millions of women to rethink their use of popular bone-building drugs, the Food and Drug Administration published an analysis that suggested caution against long-term use of the drugs, but fell short of [...]

 

Archi Trujillo/Getty Images Upending the cliché of muscleheads, scientists at the Laboratory of Neuroscience at the National Institute on Aging recently set out to examine whether changes in muscles prompted by exercise might subsequently affect and improve the brain’s ability to think. Lab animals and people generally perform better on tests of cognition after several [...]

 

Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times A vending machine that sells baby carrots in a high school in Manlius, N.Y. Five years after California started cracking down on junk food in school cafeterias, a new report shows that high school students there consume fewer calories and less fat and sugar at school than students [...]

 

Joyce Hesselberth Like many other primary care doctors, I sometimes sense the shadow of depression hovering at the edges of the exam room. I am haunted by one mother with severe postnatal depression. Years ago, I took proper care of the baby, but I missed the mother’s distress, as did everyone else. Nowadays it’s increasingly [...]

 

People with congestive heart failure are often treated with warfarin to prevent blood clots, but a large randomized double-blinded trial has found that aspirin works just as well. Researchers recruited 2,305 patients with heart failure and normal heart rhythm. Half were given regimens of warfarin and dummy aspirin, the other half aspirin and dummy warfarin. [...]

 

A new study has found that consumption of omega-3 fatty acids, plentiful in fish and nuts, is associated with lower blood levels of beta-amyloid protein. Amyloid plaques and tangles in the brain are characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease and are known to increase the risk for mental decline; blood levels of the protein may reflect levels [...]

 

People with congestive heart failure are often treated with warfarin to prevent blood clots, but a large randomized double-blinded trial has found that aspirin works just as well. Researchers recruited 2,305 patients with heart failure and normal heart rhythm. Half were given regimens of warfarin and dummy aspirin, the other half aspirin and dummy warfarin. [...]

 

Christoph Niemann THE FACTS More and more people are getting hooked on tablet computers like the iPad. By 2015, there may be as many as 80 million tablet users in the United States alone. The simplicity of the sleek hand-held devices can make life easier. But for some, a tablet can literally be a pain [...]

 

The vaccine against human papillomavirus is highly effective in preventing cervical cancer, but researchers report that the percentage of young women completing the required three vaccinations is low and dropping. Scientists studied insurance records of 271,976 girls and women in the United States who received an initial vaccination from 2006 to 2009. Ideally, the three [...]