Health

In the digital age, we have the technology to document our lives in extraordinary detail via photographs, voice recordings, and social media posts. In theory, this ability to effortlessly capture the important moments of our lives should enrich our ability to remember those moments. But in practice, people often tell me they experience the opposite.I study the neuroscience of memory and one question I hear again and again is whether technology is making us “dumber”—or, more precisely, whether it’s hurting our ability to remember. For some, the question is motivated by worry about the amount of time their children spend on screens or mobile devices. For others, it reflects concerns about their own memory problems.A common fear is that there might be a “use it or lose it” principle at play—t...

When I got diagnosed with Stage 3b Hodgkin Lymphoma at age 32, it was almost impossible to process. Without a family history or lifestyle risk factors that put cancer on my radar, I stared at the emergency room doctor in utter disbelief when he said the CT scan of my swollen lymph node showed what appeared to be cancer—and lots of it. A few days away from a bucket list trip to Japan, I’d only gone to the emergency room because the antibiotics CityMD prescribed to me when I was sick weren’t working.I didn’t want to be sick in a foreign country. So when the doctor told me of my diagnosis, the  only question I could conjure was: “So Tokyo is a no-go?”Around the world, cancer rates in people under 50 are surging, with a recent study in BMJ Oncology showing that new cases for young adults have ...

You wouldn’t think it would be easy to get nearly 4.5 million Americans—the equivalent of the entire state of Louisiana or Kentucky—to give up smoking. But it can be done in a single, straightforward step: prohibiting the sale of menthol cigarettes. That’s the conclusion of a new study in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research.The study is one more piece of evidence in favor of a nationwide menthol ban, the authors say. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed just such a ban in 2022, but in Dec. 2023, the Biden Administration postponed implementation following intense lobbying by tobacco company lobbyists and convenience store owners, who complained that the action could cost untold jobs and billions of dollars in sales. “The FDA has done its work,” says Sarah Mills, the ...

“We stumbled upon your post…and it looks like you are going through some challenging times,” the message begins. “We are here to share with you materials and resources that might bring you some comfort.” Links to suicide help lines, a 24/7 chat service, and stories of people who overcame mental-health crises follow. “Sending you a virtual hug,” the message concludes.This note, sent as a private message on Reddit by the artificial-intelligence (AI) company Samurai Labs, represents what some researchers say is a promising tool to fight the suicide epidemic in the U.S., which claims almost 50,000 lives a year. Companies like Samurai are using AI to analyze social media posts for signs of suicidal intent, then intervene through strategies like the direct message.There is a certain irony to har...

The undeniable popularity of self-help books, wellness podcasts, and happiness workshops reflects the constant human desire to make life better. But could it be that many of our lives are already better than we recognize?While we may have a loving family, a good place to live, and a decent job, we often fail to notice those things. It’s not because we are ungrateful or stupid. It’s because of a basic feature of our brain, known as habituation.Habituation is the tendency of neurons to fire less and less in response to things that are constant. You enter a room filled with roses and after a short while, you cannot detect their scent any longer. And just as you get used to the smell of fresh flowers, you also get used to a loving relationship, to a promotion, to a nice home, to a dazzling wor...

Getting the flu shot any time during respiratory virus season is better than not getting it at all. But vaccine protection wanes, so timing the shot properly can help antibodies peak when cases are highest. Researchers wanted to figure out the optimal time for getting a flu shot, and took advantage of the fact that children tend to get vaccinated in the month they were born. In a study published in BMJ, they analyzed health insurance data from more than 800,000 children, ages 2-5, who got a flu shot from 2011 to 2018. The data showed that kids vaccinated in October had the strongest protection—they were about 12% less likely to get the flu compared to kids vaccinated in August.“It makes sense that October is the ideal time to get vaccinated,” says the study's senior author Dr. Anupam Jena,...

Play is a microcosm of childhood, a protective shell like a butterfly’s chrysalis that safeguards children from the slings and arrows of life, one that allows them to grow. What happens, however, when, through no fault of your own, you are born into conditions—poverty, racism, and other adversities—that groom children for bad outcomes? Can play, if nurtured and supported in such adverse conditions, create resilience? Can increased opportunities for play encourage better-than-expected life outcomes, and possibly even provide a buffer against the odds of the cycle of poverty being perpetuated?I think back to my own childhood; when the violence and abuse started, I think I stopped playing entirely until I managed to escape that home. For me, as for so many other children, school was no place ...

First came the students, who wanted help with their homework and essays. Now, ChatGPT is luring scientists, who are under pressure to publish papers in reputable scientific journals.AI is already disrupting the archaic world of scientific publishing. When Melissa Kacena, vice chair of orthopaedic surgery at Indiana University School of Medicine, reviews articles submitted for publication in journals, she now knows to look out for ones that might have been written by the AI program. “I have a rule of thumb now that if I pull up 10 random references cited in the paper, and if more than one isn’t accurate, then I reject the paper,” she says.But despite the pitfalls, there is also promise. Writing review articles, for example, is a task well suited to AI: it involves sifting through the existi...

None of the tidying clichés ever really clicked with KC Davis, a therapist in Houston and mom to two young kids. “I’ve always been a messy person,” she says. "I've never been able to 'clean as I go.'" Davis knew there were plenty of people just like her: those who wanted a serene space but lacked the time and energy to get started. After finding bite-size strategies that worked for her, Davis wrote How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing. A messy house can feel overwhelming to tackle, and progress may seem incremental at first. But there's good reason to work on building a healthier relationship with your home. Research suggests that clutter increases levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and that cleanliness is associated with better self-rated heal...

Women need to exercise only half as much as men to reap the same longevity benefits, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.That’s good news for women who struggle to motivate themselves to hit the gym, says study co-author Dr. Martha Gulati, director of preventive cardiology at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. “For me, the news to women is: a little goes a long way,” Gulati says.In the study, men who got about 300 minutes of aerobic exercise every week had an 18% lower risk of dying compared to inactive men, the researchers found. But among women, it took only 140 minutes of weekly exercise to see an equivalent benefit—and the risk of death was 24% lower among those who got about 300 minutes of movement per week. (For both sexes, longevity bene...