Health

A four-day work week improves employees’ health in numerous ways, from reducing anxiety and stress to enabling better sleep and more time for exercise, according to a large new report. “It genuinely has, even with our academic skepticism, been a really positive outcome,” says report co-author Brendan Burchell, a social sciences professor at the U.K.’s…

Going green is something that’s open to interpretation; for some people, it involves reducing their reliance on plastic packaging and for others, it is eating locally grown food. Whatever going green means to you, it can’t be denied that greener lifestyles are healthier ones. Individuals who begin living more sustainably are undeniably happier and healthier…

While COVID-19’s effects on the lungs and respiratory system are well known, there is growing research suggesting that the virus is also affecting the heart, with potentially lasting effects. In a presentation at the annual meeting of the Biophysical Society, an international biophysics scientific group, Dr. Andrew Marks, chair of the department of physiology at…

President Biden, who turned 80 in November, was examined by doctors at Walter Reed National Medical Center in Maryland on Thursday. It was his first check up in over a year. Biden, the oldest President in US history, is widely expected to announce in the coming months that he is running for re-election. What were…

If you had COVID-19 symptoms in 2020, you probably would have masked up and braved a visit to a laboratory, doctor’s office, or clinic to get a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. A health care worker would have shoved a swab up your nose, and then you would have waited a day or two, if…

WASHINGTON — The overdose-reversing drug naloxone should be made available over the counter to aid the national response to the opioid crisis, U.S. health advisers said Wednesday. The panel of Food and Drug Administration experts voted unanimously in favor of the switch after a full day of presentations and discussions centered on whether untrained users…

Josh Larson was about 14 years old when he went to a carnival and decided to give the climbing wall a whirl. It was nothing major—about 25 feet, he recalls—but the instructor was impressed and made a deal with him. “He said, ‘If you climb this other route, which is the hardest one, we’ll give…

Each person has a powerful combination of characteristics that influence their chances of living a long life. A 2019 study by the City Health Dashboard analyzed the data from the 500 largest cities in the U.S. provides a case in point: a baby born in the Streeterville community of Chicago, in 2015, could live to…

On Feb. 3, 2022, a train loaded with toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, igniting a fire and forcing the controlled release and burn of vinyl chloride, a known cancer-causing compound, to avert a disastrous explosion. The environmental catastrophe killed thousands of fish in nearby streams and has triggered growing concerns over the impact…

The incidence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has risen significantly in recent decades, and some racial and ethnic minority groups have borne the brunt of that increase. Between 1970 and 2010, the incidence of IBD rose by 39% among white Americans. However, during that same period, the incidence of IBD among non-white Americans jumped by…