Bariatric, or weight loss, surgery works. A severely obese person might lose 50 percent of his or her excess body fat in the first year after such surgery. One question that has lingered for decades is: How long do such effects last? Another is: Do people gain back the weight that they've lost and, if so, how quickly does that happen?
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Each bottle of beer you drink makes you a bit more inebriated. Each cigarette you smoke increases your chances of damaging your lungs. Now, researchers say they've learned that each hour worked increases an individual's chances of developing heart disease. However, there are caveats to this finding.
With medical letters and the general health of the presidential candidates recently being the big topic of discussion, who's medically fit or unfit in 2016? What condition would cause you, or a major party, to disqualify someone running for President of the United States? (The answer is different for a physician.)
For the 12+ million Americans who suffer from ADHD, it is rather ironic that many of them had to remember to take their medication four times per day. With a little help from pharmaceutical chemistry, life is now a little easier.
We can’t talk about penises and urethras without mentioning vaginas. So, it seems like the perfect segue in our series on foreign bodies in the body, to move directly from one family jewel to another. Let’s dive right in and open Pandora’s box, so to speak.
Japanese scientist Yoshinori Ohsumi was honored for discovering autophagy, which is a type of programmed cell death. Some cells in multicellular organisms, like animals and plants, choose to self-destruct for the greater benefit of the organism. This can occur for a variety of reasons.
Michael Pollan, food activist and journalist, is the proverbial man trapped in the past. His latest piece for The New York Times criticizes the Obama administration for not catering to his bizarre beliefs about how food production actually works. And along he tries to smear ... the American Council's president, and you.
The crisis of antibiotic resistance and our failure to produce a robust pipeline of new antibiotics is no more than us sticking our heads in the sand and pretending the problem will go away before we have to go to the hospital and face the crisis in a very personal way.
The "follow the money" argument is an intellectually lazy fallacy. However, if you really do think that money will change our minds, then write us a check.
Andrew Silver, Inside Science -- Tiny robots taken into the body and controlled by brain patterns could someday help deliver medicine on demand.
The payoff would be tremendous if the technique could be perfected.
"You can get only the dosage you need only at the time you need," said lead author Shachar Arnon, a former computer science graduate student at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel.
The outbreak began with a Michigan parent who was diagnosed with shingles last October. Despite acquiring first-hand knowledge of the pain and discomfort of shingles, the parent apparently took no significant action to protect his or her 5 kids. Within a month, one by one each came down with chickenpox. And then it spread outside the family home.
1. Dr. Gary Null, one of the Four Horsemen of the Alternative (along with Oz, Chopra and Weil), is now most famous for hosting a conspiracy theory radio program and producing straight-to-video movies funded by organic food groups.
Environmental Working Group has never produced a science study but they have overturned 500,000 biologists, according to Null, while the US EPA, which just cleared glyphosate of weird claims made by an IARC Working Group that was hijacked by an Environmental Defense Fund consultant, is secretly suppressing damaging data about Monsanto.
Here are a few takeaways from an article focusing on the 100 most popular cereals of all time: (1) cereal's heyday was roughly 40 years ago; (2) older brands, some ancient, sit atop the list, and (3) present-day concerns about nutrition and convenience are driving the young away from making cereal their preferred breakfast choice.
What exactly happens to the lungs when someone stops smoking and starts vaping? A new study in Clinical Science tries to answer that question. The authors sought to evaluate the impact of smoking cessation on lung function and smoking related symptoms, using electronic cigarettes.
In an excerpt from Morning Consult, Dr. Robert Popovian, Senior Director of Pfizer US Government Relations, offers five suggestions for policy makers about pricing, cost, and value of innovative therapies.
AMR is inevitable. As people keep finding ways to kill the microbes that infect us, those microbes, through evolutionary processes, will mutate to counteract them.
The UK’s report, A review of Antimicrobial Resistance, is a well-considered blueprint of a financially viable way forward. While it may not find its way to your nightstand, it should be required reading for our legislatures.
As the anti-vaccine movement garnered Hollywood momentum, science stood largely silent. However, Dr. Paul Offit, inventor of the Rotavirus vaccine, took to the helm to fight for children's health and safety. Here's an informative conversation with a true expert in the field.
The FDA has approved the MiniMed 670G system developed by Medtronic. It's a computer algorithm working with a continuous glucose monitor to learn an individual’s insulin needs. Then, it adjusts their insulin pump all day, every day, to keep the lows and highs from becoming too extreme.
Chess, the eminently cerebral game, is even thought provoking in ways unrelated to the movement of pieces on the board. Can you become a talented or great player simply by practicing relentlessly? Or must one already possess superior, innate intelligence in order to succeed?
A teething baby tests the sanity of even the calmest parent, causing some to look anywhere for help. However, the FDA cautions that homeopathic teething tablets and gels may be harmful to babies and warns against using them.
Instead of discovering it, Watson and Crick solved the structure of DNA -- one tiny piece of a very large puzzle. Here, we highlight everything that was known before their 1953 paper.
Besides making wigs, or perhaps some rather bizarre clothing and artwork, there aren't a lot of practical uses for discarded human hair. But that could change thanks to a team of Japanese and South Korean chemists.
Peanut allergies range from inconvenient to potentially fatal. The cause is unknown, but it's likely to involve a combination of immunogenetic and environmental factors. For the latter, research suggests peanut allergies are more common among Westerners, possibly because they eat dry roasted peanuts while Asians eat boiled ones.
By any measure, opioid medications are much harder to get. But has this helped or hurt us? Some evidence suggests the latter.
It seems that the Journal of American Medical Association is really stretching the word "medical." A recent article highlighting the role of complementary medicine in pain management summarized the findings of a large study published in September. But when you dig a bit deeper, its conclusion is a stretch, at best.
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