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Ever found yourself burning the midnight oil or needlessly awake, while munching a late-night snack like ice cream or potato chips? If so, you're not alone. A recent study shows that sleep deprivation can alter the chemistry in our brains, causing us to seek out something pleasurable. At night, frequently that delight is high-calorie food.

With the nation's sharp rise of marijuana use over the last decade, researchers sought to determine how the drug affects a user's ability to recognize the emotions of others. A recent Colorado State University study found that cannabis users were less able to identify moods and to express empathy.

If you have a hidden agenda, it’s best to try and hide it. That's what we’d recommend after reading a misleading, unbalanced report on the website Quartz. The reporter's unsupported piece isn’t really about meat consumption and how it’s making men sick — it's about meat and how it’s making her sick.

When properly equipped for the bitterness of winter, most people don't experience unusually cold hands and feet that turn colors, especially if gloves and warm socks are involved. But for some the painful experience is actually a disease: it's called Raynaud's, and it affects roughly 28 million Americans.

Online weight-loss programs are convenient — you can access them from home whenever it suits you. But how good are they? It's hard to tell sometimes just from looking at the site. A new study suggests that consumers and their healthcare providers take a close look before advising or using many of these sites.

This fiasco is a hilarious lesson about what happens when you try to take a crappy drug, and attempt to lobby it into a good one. Or at least one that the FDA would approve. This sorry saga has it all. Good guys, bad guys, idiots, and one women who walked away from it filthy rich. Enjoy.

Gray-haired men and women alike often wonder whether to dye their hair or leave it be. But a new option may soon be available, following a gene discovery that may allow for delaying, or even halting, gray hair growth. That change could potentially alter how we guess a person's age.

Sharing is caring, right? Researchers from Belgium have discovered that, after some years, married couples' immune systems tend to look alike. This isn't surprising, given that many couples share the same lifestyle habits; from eating the same meals, exercising together, and sharing the same germs when one spouse is sick.. Gross. Kinda cute, but gross.

Ever wonder if it’s really safe to eat food quickly after dropping it on the ground? Science suggests that it may be alright to do so -- however, there are conditions, because it all depends on what you drop and where you drop it. But given the proper circumstances, the so-called "5-second rule” can work to keep illness at bay.

The current attempt by the New York City Board of Health to force chain restaurants to label foods containing high levels of salt has been stymied for now. This is a good development, since the idea that lowering the salt intake of the general population is not supported by scientific data.

Mosquito season is around the corner, and there may be an extra surprise this year, depending on how Zika behaves. So, do you slop DEET all over your kids? Spray to kill the mosquitoes? Some are calling for the use of DDT. But if you're scared of chemicals, you might actually prefer DDT to DEET. Here's how they compare.

I received a letter from the CEO of the exercise group CrossFit, Inc., but since no contact information was listed I'm responding here. As ACSH's president, I addressed his high points and clarified other statements he made, in the hope of clearing up some important issues for those with a sincere interest in evidence-based information.

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio winning his first-ever Oscar at the 88th Academy Awards on Sunday was every bit as satisfying as it should have been. But It was during DiCaprio's acceptance speech that left me, and a few others, a bit confused.

When March 27 arrives, all New York doctors will be required to switch from paper to electronic prescriptions, making the Empire State the first in the nation to make the move and say goodbye to the physician-scribbling tradition of providing medication. But it's an open question as to whether the deadline will be met.

Each year, the last day of February marks National Rare Disease Day. It's an international effort to raise awareness among the public and healthcare decision makers about the more than 6,000 diseases, that while obscure, currently exist and the impact hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

We've been calling for a ban on triclosan — the antibacterial chemical in hand soap — for some time. The FDA has finally done the right thing, because the soaps are worthless and possibly harmful. But the agency has taken action for the wrong reason, at least partly. Here's why.

Tens of thousands of women have mastectomies to treat breast cancer each year and a new study lends hope to the idea that reconstructive surgery could make breastfeeding possible afterward.

When ACSH's Alex Berezow was the editor of RealClearScience, he frequently linked to Pacific Standard's content. However, in recent months, he says the magazine as a whole has now become nearly unreadable. As its political cheerleading becomes more and more blatant, its standards for science journalism have fallen -- and that's no coincidence.

Do you know what a “bezoar” is? Probably not, but we'll explain. However, you have likely heard of the term "psychosomatic," which means an ailing mind can actually, physically bother or impair your body. Sometimes the primary disease is truly in your head, or at least it seems to have started there.

California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, commonly called Proposition 65, was enacted by popular vote in 1986. It was initially sold as a way to prevent cancer and birth defects due to chemicals in drinking water and therefore got an overwhelmingly favorable response. Who isn’t in favor of clean water? (1)

We here at the council enjoy debunking health fads. We especially enjoy debunking — in both print and video — weight loss fads. In fact, just last week I debunked one of the hottest trends in weight loss: body wraps. I don't know why this is, but something about selling unrealistic goals to vulnerable consumers for financial gain that only benefits the person at the top of the pyramid scheme really irks me. 

1. In America, we have the luxury of plentiful, affordable energy and full bellies - and so we have groups who are raising a billion dollars a year criticizing modern science and technology. Most media outlets just play along but UPI recently took a critical look at one topic; the claims of health effects related to modern natural gas extraction.

Glutathione (GSH), a combination of three amino acids made by the body, had become a fad for skin bleaching. While it is a potent antioxidant, GSH supplements or injectables have not been widely tested or approved for skin lightening. And for anyone interested in using GSH for that purpose, we can only warn that the injectable form should not be given by unqualified individuals.

Over the past few decades, there's been a significant increase in the incidence of thyroid cancer throughout the world. The countries with the highest prevalence had two common denominators: improved access to diagnostic tests (ultrasounds, CT scans, and MRIs) and routine cancer surveillance.

The MINDACT trial results suggest that women with a certain genetic profile would have a good chance of survival and cure regardless of chemotherapy, but it's not so simple.