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It’s been ten years since cancer entered my life. The experience has challenged my understanding of illness, healing, and identity—particularly the uneasy space between being a physician and becoming a patient. In its shadow, I’ve learned that survival isn’t a finish line but a state of being that reshapes how we inhabit our bodies and stories.

As men age, the conversation around “low testosterone” often oversimplifies a far more complex story. Hormones influence mood, motivation, and vitality—but so do sleep, stress, and lifestyle. Understanding how these factors intersect empowers men to take charge of their physical and mental health with clarity rather than confusion.

Halloween is when the rest of the world briefly catches up to how chemists live year-round: surrounded by weird smells, questionable substances, and the occasional explosion. It’s basically National Chemistry Week with a sense of humor.

From doctors bound by diagnostic routines to farmers trapped in monoculture dependence, from generals deferring to legal caution to archivists preserving the curiosity of everyday lives — “the reads” reveals how expertise and order can become cages when the world shifts. They remind us that resilience doesn’t come from control, but from the courage to embrace uncertainty, to ask better questions, and to remain curious in the face of the unknown

The trillions of microbes that live in and on the human body—collectively known as the microbiome—appear to have profoundly important effects on our health. This raises a potential concern: some of our most significant public health interventions—vaccines, antibiotics, sanitation—are designed to kill or limit exposure to harmful germs. Have we gone too far in our war against microbial exposure? Let's take a closer look.

Deciding what to eat, where to get it, and how those choices align with health goals or cultural habits are ordinary parts of daily life. But when thoughts about food become constant, intrusive, or exhausting—what some now call food noise—they shift from background hum to mental static. As the idea moves from online anecdotes to clinical definition, it reveals how personal experience can be transformed into a medical metric.

Cancer, even the word itself, evokes fear. It’s a shadow that looms over nearly everyone as they age, sparking anxious questions: Will I get it? What kind? Will it be caught early enough? While science has made incredible strides in understanding and treating cancer, there’s a powerful weapon against at least one type we can actually prevent.

Forever chemicals get their name from their stability. While this may be useful for a number of purposes, these dudes don't degrade or decompose; they end up all over the place. A group of British chemists has come up with a nifty way to get rid of them and make toothpaste at the same time under surprisingly mild conditions.

How much fiber do you really need to maintain optimal metabolic health? Ferocious partisans on either side of the debate will give you opposing answers, each supported by superficially compelling scientific evidence. But who's actually telling you the truth? It's complicated.

Influencer Rumer Willis boasts 1.2 million Instagram followers — a powerful platform for sharing meaningful information. Yet she continues to use it to spread wellness fads and misinformation instead. Who are we to pass up a juicy misinformation post without debunking some of its claim?

Junk science is a major problem resulting from medicine's "publish or perish" culture. Once published, it is incredibly difficult to remove from the scientific record.

A groundbreaking retinal implant, PRIMA, is restoring central vision in patients with geographic atrophy (GA), an advanced form of macular degeneration that blinds roughly 1 million Americans. Unlike drugs that slow progression, this wireless neurostimulation system captures real-world images, projects them onto a subretinal chip, and electrically stimulates surviving retinal cells to mimic natural sight. Are we nearing a paradigm shift in how we treat vision loss?

For years, reactions to histamine-rich foods like red wine, aged cheeses, and dark chocolate were dismissed as vague "sensitivities" or even psychosomatic quirks in mainstream medicine. Histamine intolerance has been so overhyped as a trendy diagnosis by flaky alternative-medicine practitioners that those who genuinely suffer have struggled to be heard. Though still limited, emerging evidence suggests the condition does exist, backed by clinical observations and biochemical mechanisms.

Warren Zevon, a brilliant, underappreciated songwriter who was known for his dark humor, will soon be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He died at 56 from mesothelioma — a brutal, rare cancer. Now, two decades later, the disease is in the news again: a new Nature Medicine paper maps its genetics and suggests the first steps toward personalized treatment. Just not yet.

Could it be that “eat green, save the planet” comes with worker exploitation? That Instagram shot of your Mediterranean salad may mask a gloomier reality for the people who hauled in its tuna and picked its citrus. Even plant-based plates wobble under cashew-shelling and asparagus-harvesting abuses. According to a new study, there’s no moral free lunch hiding in the produce aisle or for any of the “sustainable” diets.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, plexiglass barriers gleamed between tables, sidewalks turned into cafés, and circles on the ground reminded us to keep our distance — a kind of human-built “architectural immunity.” In a striking parallel, scientists have found that ants, too, redesign their nests when facing pathogens, instinctively building safer, more compartmentalized homes that limit contagion and preserve colony health.

Microplastics have replaced pesticides and chemicals as the most hated and feared substances in the US. A recent Wall Street Journal headline reads, “The Big Danger of Microplastics,” and asks us to take their quiz on “the tiny pieces of plastic that are polluting the globe and posing health risks.” In recent years, microplastics have become the new villain of public health, replacing more traditional chemicals as substances responsible for every health problem imaginable.

Ever wonder what VO2 Max really means? It’s your body’s ultimate engine metric—the maximum amount of oxygen your muscles can use during all-out effort. Does aging tank your VO2 Max? Yes; unless you fight back.

Generally recognized as safe (GRAS) has been the law of the land in the United States regarding food and beverage ingredients for decades. With MAHA’s stated quest to ensure that our food is made with only the safest ingredients, it seems obvious that GRAS would be on their radar. However, the selective outrage over some policy loopholes but not others tells a different story, particularly when examining the similar regulatory gaps in the dietary supplement industry.

Nature gives us one incredible surprise after another. If you're a bird lover and have been admiring bluebirds, jays, or barn swallows, you're not seeing a blue bird; it s actually brown. Here's how they trick you.

The future is not built by abandoning the old, but by perfecting it. From the fading art of deep reading to the century-old zipper’s subtle reinvention, each of this week’s reads reveals that true progress often lies in evolution rooted in consistency and care.

Plastic and microplastic pollution has become a defining environmental concern of our time; headlines warn that these invisible particles might be infiltrating our food and drink. But how much of this fear is grounded in science? A recent review by the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) reveals a story that calls for curiosity and careful interpretation rather than alarm.

It's about time. The U.S. Mint made its last penny on Thursday. Too bad that 328 billion of them were minted before that. They are a nuisance and not worth the energy (and pollution) necessary to mine, mint, and distribute them. Here are my two cents.

Sometimes big breakthroughs in science come from very small changes, curiosity, and more than a little luck. A new study from researchers at Oregon Health & Science University shows how swapping a single atom in a known compound created an experimental cancer-fighting molecule with a completely different mode of action and improved properties.

While heart disease silently claims hundreds of thousands of lives each year, the media devotes its attention to far rarer tragedies—painting a picture of reality driven by emotion rather than evidence.