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When health insurance becomes conditional and unaffordable, it doesn’t just disappear from balance sheets—it vanishes from people’s lives at the moment they need it most. The expiration of enhanced ACA Marketplace subsidies is not a technical policy lapse but a predictable accelerator of opioid use disorder and overdose deaths, exposing how coverage gaps, economic stress, and fragmented care combine to turn preventable suffering into fatal outcomes.

Red light therapy has gone from dermatology clinics to the wellness world, promising everything from younger-looking skin and thicker hair to weight loss, pain relief, better sleep, and even improved mood. It’s sleek, futuristic, and marketed as an effortless biohack. But when one product claims to fix everything, skepticism is the healthiest response — the consumer marketplace is flooded with underpowered gadgets, exaggerated claims, and claims that race far ahead of the science.

You've seen them on your social media algorithms: longevity influencers promising eternal youth with fancy gadgets, exotic supplements, extreme protocols, and million-dollar routines. In reality, most of what they're peddling is just a flashy overpriced rebrand of what doctors and health experts have been recommending for decades.

Whether it’s a chemist’s reckless sweet discovery, a reader’s ever-growing “tsundoku” pile, or scientists tracing the hidden patterns of superspreaders, curiosity turns accidents, habits, and outliers into insight. Even something as small as the em dash reminds us that the stories we tell — in science, books, or punctuation — often hinge on unexpected connections.

Statins have been blamed for everything short of causing bad hair days—especially by the alternative-medicine crowd, who treat “Lipitor” like it’s a controlled substance. A new Lancet meta-analysis of the best double-blind trial data available shows that most of the scary side effects on statin labels simply don’t hold up.

Eat romantic AND protect your ticker! This Valentine's Day, love your heart as much as you love your Valentine! 💕 Discover 4 heart-healthy foods + a bonus red wine toast — backed by real studies that slash heart risks.

Models, by definition, are approximations: useful, informative, and inevitably incomplete, because they are the only way to simplify a world too complex to grasp all at once. A new study on nitrous oxide chemistry in the stratosphere shows how even small revisions in a model’s assumptions can ripple outward, widening uncertainty and reshaping projections.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims “petroleum-based chemicals” are inherently poisonous, but that’s chemically illiterate: molecules don’t become dangerous because of where they come from. Some of the most important hydrocarbons on Earth—like ethylene, isoprene, squalene, and β-carotene—are made by living things and are essential for plant life, animal life, or both. This isn’t hard, folks — even Eagles fans ought to get it.

Microplastics have become a hot topic in environmental science — and a reliable source of alarming headlines. A new study reports a nifty approach to removing them using genetically engineered cyanobacteria. The key ingredient is an orange-scented molecule called limonene, which "captures" the plastic. Very clever.

Raw milk debates tend to harden into camps, but the benefits and risks are more complicated than either side often admits. I revisit earlier claims from ACSH articles in the past few weeks, acknowledging shortcomings. The result is not a verdict, but I argue for clearer evidence, better oversight, and more humility, especially on my part, in how science is communicated.

Two women in California are unhappy about phosphates and carrageenan in Costco’s rotisserie chicken. I’m fine with them—by which I mean the additives, not the women. Their lawsuit claims Costco misled customers with a “no preservatives” label, even though neither ingredient is a preservative, which makes this less a food safety issue than a masterclass in scientific confusion.

February is filled with reminders of love and health. Beyond Valentine’s Day, February is an “awareness month” for both breast cancer and cardiovascular disease in women. Cardiovascular disease and cancer remain the first and second leading causes of death in U.S. women. Although these conditions are often discussed separately, they are deeply interconnected. Together, they form what researchers now call the survivor’s paradox—a medical success story shadowed by an unexpected and life-altering consequence.

It has come to our attention that Dr. Chris D'Adamo is not the son of Peter, as we stated. We regret our error and have corrected the article.

Raw milk has long been at the center of passionate debate, with public health concerns often clashing against emerging research on its microbial complexity and potential benefits. A recent ACSH commentary appears to overlook a growing body of peer-reviewed evidence. This review highlights key scientific advances that challenge outdated assumptions and call for a more balanced, evidence-based conversation.

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, has been deemed safe by major regulators worldwide — yet it remains the center of one of the largest product liability battles in modern history. After billions in verdicts and settlements fueled by cancer claims, Bayer is now taking its fight to the US Supreme Court. The question could reshape how federal safety approvals interact with state-level lawsuits for years to come.

GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy are often portrayed as sudden breakthroughs, but their roots extend back more than a century. The path from early hormone research to today’s obesity medications is long, complex, and anything but smooth.

Most of the fat we carry is white adipose tissue, the body’s primary energy-storage system, designed to stockpile excess calories for later use. In contrast, brown adipose tissue burns energy to generate heat, especially during cold exposure. Cryotherapy enthusiasts claim that extreme cold can activate brown fat and rapidly torch calories, but the science behind these dramatic weight-loss promises is less convincing than the marketing.

February is Children’s Health Month, which makes it a fitting time to remember that some of medicine’s greatest victories are so complete that we forget the world that came before them. Fluoride is one of those victories. But it is, increasingly, one of our most enduring controversies.

If you’re confused about what you’re allowed to eat this week, don’t worry—you’re not alone. The rules change constantly and without notice. Rest assured, jelly donuts retain their culinary splendor.

Based on years of walking alongside my patients through uncertainty, risk, and irreversible choices, I believe I understand what shared decision-making actually requires. At stake, in my opinion, is whether medicine treats people as true moral agents, or quietly hands them a burden they were never equipped to carry.

For decades, body mass index (BMI) has been the dominant tool for defining obesity, despite longstanding concerns that it poorly reflects individual health risk. Growing evidence suggests that the waist-to-height ratio, a simple measure of abdominal fat distribution, outperforms BMI in predicting cardiometabolic disease and mortality. Now, with large-scale data confirming its advantages and the US military adopting it as a new fitness standard, this long-overlooked metric may finally be moving into the mainstream.

Following Congress’s repeal of the FDA’s long-standing animal testing requirement, the Environmental Protection Agency is now taking major steps toward adopting faster, cheaper, and more human-relevant alternatives. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s recent commitment signals a significant shift toward modernized, animal-free regulatory science driven by organoids, human-cell platforms, and predictive AI.

Radiation therapy is often described in clinical terms, but rarely through the eyes of the person lying on the treatment table. After decades of working with medical radiation professionally, I found myself on the receiving end of the beam. This is what radiation therapy looks and feels like.

It‘s tragic when a parent or guardian is falsely blamed for a child’s injuries. While any miscarriage of justice is disconcerting, erroneous convictions in child abuse cases can be catastrophic. Not only does it traumatize the accused, but it results in separating the child from his or her parent. The consequences of this legal mishap have been portrayed in fiction and TV (e.g., A Little Life). But it has also occurred in real life, notably in the Maya Kowalski case.

Non-sugar sweeteners are neither miracle cures for obesity nor hidden health threats. Recent evidence shows they can modestly support weight loss, help reduce sugar intake and fit safely into a balanced diet. The "uncomfortable truth" is clear: these sweeteners are context-dependent tools, not standalone solutions. Over-relying on them or ignoring overall eating patterns won't deliver big results. Let's take a closer look.