When it comes to food and dieting, sometimes we can trick ourselves to believe what we want to believe. Specifically, weight-conscious people can experience what psychologists call "negative calorie illusion," the belief that an "unhealthy" meal can be made less caloric if a "healthy" side dish is added. Pretty fascinating.

In chemo suites all over the country, there are bell-ringing celebrations when a patient's treatment ends. That's nice for the "graduate," but not so much for the terminally ill who are left behind. This is often a cruel and insensitive practice, and it needs to stop.

Ambien has become fodder for late-night TV comedians and attention-seeking magazines. Sure, some mighty strange sleep behaviors have been reported. But in watching the news you might get the impression that there's an army of Ambien Zombies on the march. Nope, no such army. And for most, there's nothing to lose sleep over.

Marketing executives at General Mills insisted that if their personal Twitter feeds were evidence, people were in a panic about GMOs. Then they discovered the awful truth.

Rather than rehash the disclosure of conflicts that led to the downfall of the now-former Chief Medical Officer at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, consider how this episode reflects a more common problem of "entitled" powerful people. Here are two remedies that don't require investigations and can possibly help correct medical research's vacillating integrity dilemma.

With Americans living longer than ever, more and more attention is being paid to how adults manage potentially-fatal diseases and end-of-life issues. Here are two cases in point, both focusing on the mental – not medicinal – aspects of this topic: a recent book about embracing mortality, and the growing prominence of so-called "cancer coaches."

The reason is that ligaments are poorly vascularized. In other words, there aren't many blood vessels to provide nutrients for the ligaments. And without nutrients tissue repair is not possible. Oftentimes, ACL tears require a surgical graft.

Many well-intended efforts that fixate on bias can achieve the unintended consequence of imposing it instead.

"Satisficing" – a made-up word created by combining satisfactory and sufficient – indicates something good, but not great. Like the Canadian single-payer health system, like Medicare for All.

Contrary to wide-eyed speculation and fearmongering, coffee is not going extinct. Coffee bean production is up, and prices are down.