Altered states of consciousness through yoga, mindfulness more common than thought and mostly beneficial, study finds — though clinicians ill-equipped to help those who struggle
Responding to the health threat posed by Americans’ over-consumption of sodium, experts in the department of nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and The Culinary Institute of America…
David Page, director of the Whitehead Institute and professor of biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says research indicates the much-maligned Y chromosome plays a more critical role in genetics than previously believed.
A new nicotine product, apparently designed to tide smokers over in places where they can’t light up, resembles some candy. It leads to fear among researchers that children will eat the pills and suffer poisoning.
A tobacco company’s new, dissolvable nicotine pellet–which is being sold as a tobacco product, but which in some cases resembles popular candies–could lead to accidental nicotine poisoning in children, according…
Surplus and waste laboratory equipment from Harvard is finding new life in labs overseas through two student groups and a nonprofit started by a former Harvard graduate student.
Chronically ill elderly patients, when asked to bear a higher share of health care costs, cut prescription drug use and office visits. Consequently, they were hospitalized more often, according to a Harvard Kennedy School study.
An artificial pancreas system that closely mimics the body’s blood sugar control mechanism was able to maintain near-normal glucose levels without causing hypoglycemia in a small group of patients. The…
The implementation of electronic health record systems may not be enough to significantly improve health quality and reduce costs. In the April 2010 issue of Health Affairs, Harvard researchers from…
Although more children today are surviving cancer than ever before, young patients successfully treated in the 1970s and 80s may live a decade less, on average, than the general population,…
It is thought to have been responsible for the deaths of emperors. In parts of California’s forests, it is everywhere. It is the deathcap mushroom, Amanita phalloides, so filled with…
The ability of cancer cells to resist treatment with either targeted drug therapies or traditional chemotherapy may, in some cases, result from a transient state of reversible drug “tolerance.” In…
Biology Professor Anne Pringle is taking the study of one of the world’s most poisonous mushrooms out of the realm of adventure stories and into the world of ecology, in an attempt to better understand how it spreads.
Of the millions of animals on Earth, including the relative handful that are considered the most intelligent — including apes, whales, crows, and owls — only humans experience the severe…
Disorders that result in severe neurological decline, such as Alzheimer’s disease, are not found in other animals, meaning that humans acquired their predisposition to the disease during recent evolution.
The diagnosis and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder has come a long way since the 1970s, with research now showing it is both more common and more treatable than once…
The Internet has had a profound effect on clinical practice by providing both physicians and patients with a wealth of information. But with those rewards come risks of incorrect or…
Terry Keane, a longtime PTSD researcher and associate chief of staff for research and development at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System, says researchers in recent years have learned much about post-traumatic stress, including that it is both more prevalent and more treatable than previously supposed.
As twilight fell over Port-au-Prince that first terrible night after Haiti’s January earthquake, Louise Ivers watched a strange cloud of dust settle over the city. Stirred by buildings collapsing as the late afternoon quake struck, the cloud was pierced only by sound, a rising chorus of screams from across the capital as the toll became apparent.
If a middle-aged or older woman with a normal body mass index wants to maintain her weight over an extended period, she must engage in the equivalent of 60 minutes…
In a new study, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health find that replacing saturated fats with polyunsaturated ones is likely to help reduce the risk of heart disease.
Although for nearly 60 years people have been urged to decrease their consumption of saturated fats to prevent heart disease, there has been surprisingly little scientific evidence that doing so actually decreases the risk of coronary heart disease events
Assistant clinical professor of psychology Deirdre Barrett says that many of today’s ills come from intentional overstimulation of natural human impulses, giving people hard-to-resist appetites for everything from fighting to sex to unhealthy foods.
Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, and a team of collaborators have observed for the first time that the risk of multiple…
The trauma experienced during war may increase the risk of developing asthma, according to the results of a new study by Harvard researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), Harvard…
Former FDA commissioner David Kessler says overeating has to be attacked the same way that tobacco was in the past, by making it socially unacceptable.
Amyloid-beta protein – the primary constituent of the plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients – may be part of the body’s first-line system to defend against infection.…
Research suggests that the brain’s lateral prefrontal cortex plays an important role in showing how well someone can rebound emotionally the day after an argument.
José Cordero, dean of the University of Puerto Rico’s School of Public Health, said that the progress made in the 20th century on infant mortality has revealed new health concerns stemming from that success: how to reduce birth defects and provide care for the greater number of children who are surviving them.
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