When replenishing fluids, does milk beat water?
Driving along the freeway recently, a billboard caught my eye. In bold letters it proclaimed: Milk hydrates better than water. Wait, could this be true? And if so, should I be rehydrating with milk after a workout? And should we all have milk, rather than water, in our water bottles? What’s behind the claim? Unsurprisingly, […]
Slowing down racing thoughts
Everyone has moments when their brain suddenly goes haywire. They repeatedly fixate on the same thought, like being stuck on a hamster wheel. Or their thoughts aimlessly bounce from one random topic to the next like a pinball. People often refer to these thought patterns as racing thoughts, and the most common cause is anxiety, […]
Is alcohol and weight loss surgery a risky combination?
For people with obesity, weight-loss surgery can reverse or greatly improve many serious health issues, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and pain. But these procedures also change how the body metabolizes alcohol, leaving people more likely to develop an alcohol use disorder. A new study finds that one type of surgery, gastric bypass, may […]
Will miscarriage care remain available?
When you first learned the facts about pregnancy — from a parent, perhaps, or a friend — you probably didn’t learn that up to one in three ends in a miscarriage. What causes miscarriage? How is it treated? And why is appropriate health care for miscarriage under scrutiny — and in some parts of the […]
Lead poisoning: What parents should know and do
You may have heard recent news reports about a company that knowingly sold defective lead testing machines that tested tens of thousands of children between 2013 and 2017. Or wondered about lead in tap water after the widely reported problems with lead-contaminated water in Flint, Michigan. Reports like these are reminders that parents need to […]
Easy ways to shop for healthful, cost-conscious foods
Three months into the year is a good time to recalculate if you’ve been slacking on your resolution to eat healthy. And if you’ll be leaving home base or school soon and foraging for yourself (plus or minus roommates), it’s a great time to learn about healthy, low-cost choices for your grocery list. The basics: […]
Safe, joyful movement for people of all weights
A simple word we all hear often — exercise — makes many people cringe. Unhappy childhood memories of school sports or gym classes, flat-out physical discomfort, guilty reluctance, or trouble finding time or pleasurable activities may help explain this. Additionally, for some people with obesity, fear of falling or injury is a high barrier to […]
Babesiosis: A tick-borne illness on the rise
You may be familiar with Lyme disease, a bacterial infection from the bite of an infected black-legged tick. While Lyme disease is the most commonly reported tick-borne illness in the United States, another is on the rise: babesiosis. A March 2023 CDC report shows that babesiosis now has a foothold in 10 states in the […]
How does waiting on prostate cancer treatment affect survival?
Prostate cancer progresses slowly, but for how long is it possible to put off treatment? Most newly diagnosed men have low-risk or favorable types of intermediate-risk prostate cancer that doctors can watch and treat only if the disease is found to be at higher risk of progression. This approach, called active surveillance, allows men to […]
Save the trees, prevent the sneeze
When I worked at Greenpeace for five years before I attended medical school, a popular slogan was, “Think globally, act locally.” As I write this blog about climate change and hay fever, I wonder if wiping off my computer that I’ve just sneezed all over due to my seasonal allergies counts as abiding by this […]