Category: Health

Ljupco Smokovski/Shutterstock The use of dietary supplements has increased sharply in recent years. Vitamins, minerals and other nutritional products are often marketed as simple ways to boost energy, support immunity, protect brain health or even promote longevity. For many people, taking supplements can feel like a sensible, proactive health habit. But this perception can be […]

Highly moralised food messaging may encourage disordered eating patterns. superbeststock/Shutterstock For many people interested in health and wellbeing, the idea of ultra-processed food, or UPF, has become more than a technical term in nutrition research. In public debate, it often serves as shorthand for wider concerns about modern, industrially produced food. Those concerns are not […]

Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock.com Artificial intelligence can now outperform doctors at diagnosing patients in the emergency department, according to a new study in Science. The AI was given written notes from real emergency department records from a hospital in Boston, US, and asked to weigh in at different points during the patient’s care. At the earliest stage – […]

MDV Edwards/Shutterstock Whooping cough, medically known as pertussis, is a highly contagious bacterial infection that affects the airways. It gets its common name from the “whoop” sound that some infected children make when they take a deep, gasping breath after a severe coughing fit. The infection is caused by the bacterium bordetella pertussis, with research […]

Piece of Cake/Shutterstock.com Linus Pauling was one of the most brilliant scientists of the 20th century. He won two Nobel prizes and transformed our understanding of chemical bonds and the structure of proteins. Late in his career, though, he became famous for something very different: a passionate belief that very high doses of vitamin C […]

BearFotos/Shutterstock.com Standing by the counter at the pharmacist waiting to pick up my prescription, I couldn’t help noticing the prominent display of probiotics on the counter. It was two years ago, and I was reading everything I could find on microbiomes and probiotics – whether in books, journals or in shops – in preparation for […]

Here are some good reasons to try 'nonnamaxxing' for life. Inna Postnikova/ Shutterstock The key to better wellbeing is acting like an Italian grandmother, according to social media’s “nonnamaxxing” trend. Proponents of the trend say that adopting the lifestyle habits of an Italian nonna will help improve your health and mental wellbeing. The core principles […]

lara-sh/Shutterstock.com Cruises are sold as floating holidays, but they are also useful for understanding public health. Cruise ships are carefully designed places where many people live, eat, relax and move through the same shared spaces for days at a time. They show how easily illness can spread when people are packed into a single interconnected […]

I Wei Huang/Shutterstock People in the UK are now spending fewer years in good health than they did a decade ago, according to a new analysis by the Health Foundation. The UK now sits near the bottom of a 21-country comparison, ahead only of the US. A drop in healthy life expectancy is explained through […]

The actor performs pilates moves while wearing an EMS suit. StudioLab Images/ Shutterstock Actor Sarah Michelle Gellar, best known for her role as teenage demon slayer Buffy Summers, recently shared in an interview that she uses an “EMS suit” during workouts to stay fit. And she’s not the only one who has made this form […]