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We've been seeing news reports about runs on Imodium. The FDA has the anti-diarrheal medicine in its sights because it is being abused and is also really dangerous. How dangerous? You have a 4.6 times greater chance of dying from a coconut hitting you on the head. 

A California judge is going to determine whether or not coffee causes cancer. Think about that. We live in a society where judges and lawyers – not medical doctors or scientists – get to determine the credibility of biomedical research. And guess who paid in the process?

We all tend to do certain things because “it’s just what you do,” or it's out of passive acceptance of conventional wisdom. And especially in the medical realm, it's important not to overlook issues that could be of even greater importance.

It sounds like something right out of a horror movie, but it's real life. Parents in the United Kingdom — desperate to cure their children of autism — fall prey to snake oil, and to the con men that sell it. But this type of snake oil — doing away with autism by drinking bleach, is deadly. 

For many major league baseball players, the placebo effect is alive and well. This is indisputable, especially following a bizarre, public display of one of the most extreme cases of "cupping" – the dubious practice of applying suction to the skin to supposedly enhance muscle relief. Really, who'd do this? The answer is right here.
 

A Florida orthopedic surgeon charged with possession and distribution of an analog of fentanyl called furanylfentanyl, which resulted in the death of a young woman, has had his trial postponed until April. 

Naked mole rats, which are neither moles nor rats, have unusually long lifespans compared to other rodents, and also seem to not develop cancer. Researchers are diligently searching for the key(s) to their success, and recent work sheds some light on how these critters manage to avoid both.

How did the honeybee go, in one year, from poster insect for environmental concerns to invasive species? It's because environmental groups change the story as they are debunked.

Stopping the transmission of Zika and dengue viruses is a top priority in the fields of infectious disease and global health. A novel strategy, one that infects the mosquitoes with bacteria, may just be the key to stopping these viruses in their tracks. 

Another product for suckers. Bulletproof-360 Coffee, brought to you by David (Avocado) Wolfe, easily one of the most annoying people on the planet. Does it really work? Will you really be bulletproof? Enough so to piss off narcoterrorists just to see what happens? Oh, and the company has had two products recalled in the past seven months. Maybe not such a good idea after all.

The current flu season is a nightmare, spreading ferociously. If that's not bad enough, there are instances where it kills within hours – just like it's 100-year-old ancestor, the Spanish Flu of 1918. What is going on here? 

Here's a case of a 13-year-old boy who pierced his skull with a 6-inch screw after an accidental fall. With unintentional injury the fourth-leading cause of death, here's how best to avoid a negative outcome.

One of the worst junk science trends in recent years is for grocery stores and restaurants to claim that they serve "clean food." Obviously, the not-so-subtle message is that everybody else is serving poison, so to be safe, you better eat their food. It's well past time to put aside the snobbish notion that eating clean, local, organic food makes you a superior, healthier human.

While obesity has been reliably linked to many serious health problems – such as diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers – there's a minority of obese people who are metabolically healthy. A new study points to physical fitness as being a key component in these folks' avoidance of some of the usual obesity-linked health issues.

You probably haven't had an earache or ear infection since you were a child, but adults are not immune to infections in the middle ear, especially after they've been exposed to the flu.

Bones are not inert objects, but instead living tissue that responds to a host of mechanical forces. So what if the reason some elderly fall and "break" their hip is that – similar to a bridge collapsing from mechanical fatigue – their bones just gave way? 

While Gary Hirshberg is a marketing genius, in a #MeToo world even those on his side of the political spectrum have been calling Stonyfield out for sexism. The vitriol stems from its newest anti-science commercial, one that features little girls – and the message that girls can't understand science.

In what's become an eagerly anticipated tradition, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warns us that we're all moments away from annihilation. The international media uncritically reports this nonsense, even though the Doomsday Clock has been around since 1947. Yet we're still here. Guess there's something wrong with the clock.

Rarely does Lyme Disease manifest itself as a neuro-invasive condition known, in shorthand, as Bannwarth Syndrome. It's a complicated version of Lyme, and when a cluster of five cases surfaced late last summer, all in the upper midwest, a few red flags were raised.
 

When your doctor insists that you must exercise, that's often received as necessary drudgery. But what if that mandate was to go out and play? A new European study found that recreational soccer can lower "blood pressure, fat mass, and LDL cholesterol" regardless of age or gender, and can do so "after only 12 weeks of training." 

As if there aren't enough ridiculous things to study – and worry about. A group in Great Britain thinks that sandwiches are causing the Earth to warm. Now there's a baloney sandwich – if there ever was one.

What these two processes share is baked into the math of each. In fact, in that respect, they're nearly identical. They both involve some stuff (atoms or money) that is either growing or shrinking. And best yet, they both have a magic number. 

A new meta-analysis published in the journal Sleep Medicine found that middle-aged adults who suffered from insomnia, nightmares and regular bouts of broken sleep were more likely to face cognitive impairment in their later years.

Dangerous fentanyl is now part of the emotionally-charged, lethal injection controversy. This has erupted because Nevada wants to combine it with Valium to execute a twice-convicted murderer. Opinions abound. See who's right and who is wrong.

Philadelphia has a program to provide drug users with clean needles, a safe site to inject and referrals for treatment and social services – a first in the United States. But before we accept or reject the mainstream narratives, let's consider some of the evidence municipal lawmakers studied before taking this action.