Health

Hospitals are such important places in our lives. It's where we are born, where we go for help when we’re not well, and where we turn to when cancer, a heart attack, or major injury leaves us hanging by a thread. It’s also where our loved ones spend their time anxiously waiting for us to get better, to hear good or bad news.So then, why are hospitals such miserable places?Most hospitals are so poorly designed, you feel their negative effects the moment you walk through the front door. The unintuitive layout immediately disorients you. The stark, cold lighting and hard surfaces create a feeling of sterility. There’s no soothing music to put you at ease, just the beeping of machines and rushing of hospital staff. It always feels like something is wrong. Like the worst is about to happen—whic...

Some 6.9 million 23andMe customers had their data compromised after an anonymous hacker accessed user profiles and posted them for sale on the internet earlier this year, the company said on Monday. The compromised data included users’ ancestry information as well as, for some users, health-related information based on their genetic profiles, the company said in an email. Privacy advocates have long warned that sharing DNA with testing companies like 23andMe and Ancestry makes consumers vulnerable to the exposure of sensitive genetic information that can reveal health risks of individuals and those who are related to them. Read More: DNA Testing Kits Are on Everyone's Holiday List. 5 Things to Know If You Get OneIn the case of the 23andMe breach, the hacker only directly accessed about 14,...

Over the past several decades, there have been many supporting studies of the health-promoting effects of an optimistic personality. Much research has been done on the connection between a high level of optimism and good health, described well in clinical psychologists Burel R. Goodin and Hailey W. Bulls' 2014 research paper, appropriately titled, “Optimism and the Experience of Pain: Benefits of Seeing the Glass as Half Full.” The authors state that optimism “is linked to both enhanced physiological recovery and psychosocial adjustment to coronary artery bypass surgery, bone marrow transplant, postpartum depression, traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer’s disease, lung cancer, breast cancer, and failed in vitro fertilization.” Newer research demonstrates that high levels of hope have been fou...

Humans rely on a bevy of strange natural chemicals to liven up our food and drink, to endure pain, and to change our perspective. We use caffeine from coffee, tea, and yerba mate to stimulate our bodies and minds, capsaicin from red pepper flakes or isothiocyanates in horseradish or wasabi to enliven our food with spice, and codeine or morphine to endure the pain of injuries and surgeries.Lately, though, some have also turned to psychedelics like psilocybin to change their perspectives. In fact, researchers are beginning to test if they could serve as new treatments for mental health disorders.That said, the bigger question is why plants, mushrooms, microbes and even some animals make chemicals like these with life-saving, life-enhancing, and even life-ending properties. My job as an evolu...

Facing enormous pressure to tame what appears to be a spiraling and increasingly intertwined statewide crisis in mental health, substance use, and homelessness, California officials have created the Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Court, or CARE Court. The new system is a policy smorgasbord that ranges from the provision of court-ordered treatment and housing to food assistance, social activities, and exercise programming for Californians with severe mental illness. CARE Court, which launched in October to skeptical but hopeful Californians, is aimed at tackling the Golden State’s perpetual public welfare emergency through a collaborative referral and treatment process. The plan, passed and signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom in July, is currently being piloted in San F...

Suicide rates in the U.S. reached an all-time high in 2022, continuing a surge that began in 2021, according to new provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The increase to 14.3 deaths per 100,000 people in 2022, up from 14.1 in 2021, represented a 1% higher rate in suicides across the country. Though the rise is significantly smaller than the 4% jump in the rate from 2020 to 2021, the numbers indicate a still-growing problem with no clear explanation. Provisional data is also incomplete, which means that the final number of suicides in 2022 will likely be higher as additional death certificates are processed. The current total included in the data is 49,449, meaning it’s possible the number of U.S. suicides will cross 50,000 in a single year for the first time...

In 2014, then-57-year-old bioethicist Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel wrote an infamous essay titled, “Why I Hope to Die at 75” for The Atlantic. His argument boiled down to this: it’s not worth living as long as humanly possible if those efforts yield extra decades defined by disease and poor health, which data suggest is the fate awaiting many people in the U.S.Nearly a decade later, neither Emanuel’s mind nor the statistics have changed much. Emanuel still says he plans to stop most life-extending medical care once he reaches age 75, though he’s healthy enough that he expects to live longer naturally. And there is still a yawning gap between the average number of years someone born in the U.S. can expect to live—77.5, according to a new federal estimate for 2022—and the number of years they can exp...

Most U.S. cities would have to replace lead water pipes within 10 years under strict new rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency as the Biden administration moves to reduce lead in drinking water and prevent public health crises like the ones in Flint, Michigan and Washington, D.C.Millions of people consume drinking water from lead pipes and the agency said tighter standards would improve IQ scores in children and reduce high blood pressure and heart disease in adults. It is the strongest overhaul of lead rules in more than three decades, and will cost billions of dollars. Pulling it off will require overcoming enormous practical and financial obstacles.“These improvements ensure that in a not too distant future, there will never be another city and another child poisoned by ...

An endless supply of trendy takes in recent years claim that among young adults, smoking is cool again. But though they may be hanging from the lips of major influencers and starlets, cigarettes have far more fans in an older demographic, according to new data on adult smoking behaviors in the United States. From 2011 to 2022, the prevalence of smoking habits decreased in every age bracket except one: the 65-and-up crowd. Public health campaigns and programs outlining the dangers of smoking aren’t really aimed at older adults, says Rafael Meza, an integrative oncologist at the BC Cancer Research Institute in Vancouver and the lead author of a new study on adult smoking. “In the U.S., smoking really has a generational pattern,” he says. Meza’s new analysis, published Dec. 1 in JAMA Health F...