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Experiencing heartburn? Then consuming an acidic product like apple cider vinegar isn't the solution. The logic is simple: if you've got excess stomach acid, more acid won't help. But up is down in the world of alternative medicine, so let's take a closer look at the bad chemistry behind this "natural" treatment for acid reflux.

Medicine has long been framed as a calling, an identity meant to be lived, not simply performed. But when that calling collides with rigid professional stereotypes and changing expectations about work, meaning can fracture into burnout rather than fulfillment. A surprising, and seasonally relevant study of professional Santas reveals how identity fit, not commitment, shapes whether a calling sustains or exhausts.

Our preference for sweet tastes represents an elegant evolutionary adaptation. The ability to detect sweet substances likely evolved to identify energy-rich sources, primarily sugars in fruits, plants, and breast milk, providing essential metabolic fuel. This evolutionary pattern varies across species. While some carnivorous animals, like cats, lost functional sweet taste receptors, the ability to recognize and seek carbohydrates remained crucial for our survival, helping identify food sources suitable for cultivation.

President Trump issued an executive order calling on the DEA to reclassify cannabis as a Schedule III controlled substance. It has been heretofore classified as Schedule I, meaning it has ‘no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.’ Many proponents fear that classifying cannabis with drugs like codeine and ketamine will cause an epidemic of reefer madness. But the prohibitionists can relax. Rescheduling is not legalization—it’s prohibition with new paperwork

Everyday life is full of small behaviors we treat as moral choices, scientific truths, or acts of civic virtue—often without much reflection. From abandoned shopping carts to climate guilt over pet ownership, from misplaced faith in statistical “significance” to misunderstandings of animal behavior, these examples reveal how intuition, habit, and oversimplified science shape what we believe.

Every January, the resurgence of diet and detox trends makes it difficult to distinguish reputable health advice from the opportunistic claims of "Wellness Warriors". The current obsession with anti-inflammatory diets serves as a perfect case study. As the internet becomes saturated with information, it becomes increasingly difficult to separate evidence-based guidance from marketing.

We often talk about science as if it were a purely logical enterprise. Yet, the way we ask questions—and even the kind of questions we think matter—is shaped by something far older than the scientific method: the architecture of our brains. Whether we lean toward “how” or “why” reflects not only cognitive habits but cultural values, emotional instincts, and the stories we tell about knowledge itself. Understanding this split may help explain why scientific communication so often falters in the space between data and meaning.

A new randomized trial from North Carolina suggests that digital tools like mPATH may slightly boost participation in CT lung cancer screening—yet the overall uptake remains strikingly low. Despite proven survival benefits and minimal risks, only a small fraction of eligible smokers proceed with screening, revealing deep systemic and informational barriers. Understanding why participation is so limited is essential to improving outcomes for one of the deadliest yet most survivable cancers when detected early.

America’s overdose crisis isn’t the simple story we’ve been told for years. A new investigation reveals how two key graphs — one famous, one ignored — shift entirely the way we understand what happened, why deaths keep rising, and why current policies continue to fail. This op-ed explains why the familiar “four-phase opioid epidemic” narrative collapses under scrutiny.

Scientific guidance isn’t carved in stone—it shifts as new evidence reshapes old assumptions. The recent reversal of long-standing hormone therapy warnings highlights how politics, public trust, and evolving data collide and why “follow the science” is far more complicated—and more vital—than the slogan suggests.

November 19th is National Bidet Day. Why? Who knows. But let's not waste an opportunity to make fun of it. Dust off that disco suit.

Taking Ozempic or Wegovy? Yale researchers just dropped a bombshell: two glasses of wine now hit like four, your BAC climbs higher and stays there longer, and you might not even feel it coming. And here’s the wild part: doctors say this same effect could accidentally be the most powerful tool we’ve ever had against alcohol addiction.

Doctors were once considered Gods, or at least godlike. Lawyers and now philosophers have long tried to grab a similar status -- by birthing artificial people. In the beginning, lawyers created corporate “persons.” And now they’re about to midwife their latest miracle: the AI-person. If you think a ChatBot with rights, duties, and the capacity to be sued (or sue you) sounds absurd, just wait until it asks for counsel.

Celebrities have discovered the ultimate performance enhancer: supplements that boost their bank accounts more than your health. With a dash of glamour and a sprinkle of pseudoscience, they promise you can buy your way to Beckham-level vitality—one overpriced scoop at a time. Spoiler: the glow is mostly marketing.

Can you benefit from light therapy? It depends. Treatments range from nonsensical to possibly useful to those proven to be effective.

"You have cancer." It's a life-changing (and sometimes life-ending) development—a horrible piece of news no one is really ever prepared to receive. Are there better and worse ways to react? Can you do anything to improve your prognosis? Dr. Chuck Dinerstein answers these questions while recounting his harrowing experience with prostate cancer.

The new Lancet Series on ultra-processed foods (UPFs) draws on decades of global data, mechanistic evidence, and more than 100 prospective studies to argue that UPFs constitute a dietary pattern actively displacing traditional food cultures and driving chronic disease worldwide. Yet the UPF/NOVA framework is itself contested, a point worth keeping in mind as the article advances its arguments.

Social media is awash in testimonials from anonymous men who claim that testosterone-replacement therapy (TRT) helped them beat depression, sexual dysfunction, obesity and other maladies that often impact men as they age. Such compelling endorsements no doubt appeal to others who struggle with these critical health issues, but do they stand up to scientific scrutiny? Let's take a closer look.

Across four very different stories runs a common thread: our deepening struggle to preserve authentic human connection in a world being reshaped by age, loss, and advancing technology. Together, they ask whether connection can be digitized, whether memory can be simulated, and whether creativity can survive automation, reminding us that the most meaningful bonds are still forged in the living, breathing presence of real people.

Joshua Lederberg, Nobel laureate and president of Rockefeller University, is well known in biology circles.  Not so his wife, Dr. Esther Lederberg – whose name was drowned in the annals of the history of biology. And yet her work is critical to the practice of cutting-edge medicine and serves as a scaffold for modern genetic discoveries.

A sweeping new analysis of more than 4,000 brain scans reveals that our brains’ neural networks don’t simply mature and then decline; they reorganize through a series of distinct life-stage “epochs,” each with its own opportunities and vulnerabilities. These structural shifts help explain why our abilities, behaviors, and risks for specific neurological conditions change so markedly across the lifespan.

We wait, eyes open, knowing Chat-AI is on the loose and a new wave of cataclysm is coming: more abused kids, more empty chairs at dinner tables, more emergency holds in psych wards. If regulators aren’t stepping in and courts are hamstrung, the Bots may be on the verge of takeover – the last hope may be lawyers who can outwit them. How sad.

House on fire? No worry. Sabre-toothed tiger chasing you? Big deal. Major surgery scheduled? Yawn. Fortunately for mankind (or at least most of us), there’s a sedative called Versed — and it relaxes you so thoroughly that… who cares?

While dogs have long been celebrated for easing stress and boosting companionship, science is beginning to explore a more unexpected influence: the microbes they share with us. A new study suggests that some of the mental-health benefits seen in teens who grow up with dogs might be carried not by wagging tails, but microscopic hitchhikers.

This essay examines how recent political intervention has reshaped the CDC’s public messaging on vaccines and autism. In Part 1, I explain why the scientific evidence on this topic has not changed—and why the CDC’s newly revised webpage represents a step backward for public health communication. Part 2 will explore how growing political influence has eroded trust in the agency over time.