TimeMagazine Dr. Leana Wen, the former Baltimore public health commissioner who was the first physician to helm Planned Parenthood in roughly 50 years, abruptly announced Tuesday that she is leaving the organization due to “philosophical differences” with its leadership. “As a physician and public health leader, I came to Planned Parenthood to lead a national health … Read more
Imagine a firefighter battling a blaze while the sprinkler system emits gasoline. This is the current state of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). So far, over 1,600 people have died from the virus and thousands more have been infected. While this outbreak is not yet at the scale of the … Read more
People all across the U.S. have been sweating through heat waves this summer, and new research suggests they should get used to it. Over the next century, climate change will likely make extreme heat conditions—and their concordant health risks—much more frequent in nearly every part of the U.S., according to a paper published in the … Read more
Surgeons announced on Monday that they have separated conjoined twin sisters after multiple surgeries that took more than 50 hours to complete. Two-year-old Safa and Marwa Ullah underwent three surgeries carried out between October 2018 and February this year at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, according to the Guardian. The sisters, who hail from … Read more
Listening to music while you work “significantly impairs” creativity. That was the conclusion of a study published earlier this year in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology that examined the effect of different types of background music on creative problem solving. For the study, UK researchers presented people with a series of word puzzles designed to … Read more
Taking someone else’s advice, even when you ask for it, is difficult. Entire studies have been conducted just to understand the widespread phenomenon of “advice discounting.” But even as we ignore the well-intentioned suggestions of our friends, families and therapists, many of us come back week after week to the advice columns published by a … Read more
There hasn’t been much good news about Alzheimer’s lately, between the March announcement by Biogen and Esai that a promising trial of a potential drug treatment failed, and the July decision by Novartis and Amgen to stop their study of another class of therapies for the neurodegenerative disease. But in a pair of studies presented … Read more
Calorie restriction is typically associated with weight loss. But a growing body of research suggests a lower-calorie diet may bring a range of other health benefits, even for those who aren’t trying to drop pounds. The latest study, published July 11 in the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, suggests that cutting just 300 calories a day, … Read more
First there was hygge, the Danish concept that made staying in and getting cozy cool. Then there was lagom, the Swedish mindset of approaching life with an “everything in moderation” mindset. Now there’s another Northern European trend that’s being embraced as a way to combat our increasingly busy and often stressful lives: niksen. The Dutch … Read more
René Favaloro, a pioneering Argentine heart surgeon, is being remembered with a Google Doodle for his contributions to coronary bypass surgery on what would have been his 96th birthday. Born in La Plata, Argentina, in 1923, Favaloro started his career as a doctor in the farming community of Jacinto Arauz, where he built his own … Read more