Category: Health

Sergiy Katyshkin/Shutterstock Light therapy sounds wholesome. Clean. Almost pastoral. Sit in front of a lamp. Feel better. In our latest episode of the Strange Health podcast, we discovered that it can also mean strapping on a flashing mask and watching your own brain generate kaleidoscopic hallucinations behind closed eyelids. The spark for this episode was […]

Pixel-Shot/Shutterstock.com When South Korean doctors launched a nationwide thyroid cancer screening programme, diagnoses shot up 15 fold. Yet the death rate from thyroid cancer didn’t budge. More patients were being created than lives were being saved. It is a clear illustration of a problem that is quietly reshaping how doctors think about cancer: overdiagnosis. Not […]

StockLab/Shutterstock Anyone born after January 1 2009 will never be able to legally buy tobacco in the UK thanks to the tobacco and vapes bill, which is expected to become law in March 2026. When it does, it will mean that the legal age for tobacco sales will rise by one year every year from […]

New Africa/Shutterstock Hunger is often discussed as a matter of willpower. In appetite research, it looks very different. Physiologists who study eating behaviour and metabolism see hunger as a fluctuating biological signal shaped by hormones, digestion, activity and environment. The recent surge of interest in GLP-1 drugs has brought one part of this system into […]

A 68-year-old man's sudden love for Spitfire engine noises turned out to be an early sign of dementia. Kev Gregory/ Shutterstock When people hear the word dementia, they often think of someone who has problems with memory. While memory is often affected in dementia, this is not always the case. There are many different types […]

SewCreamStudio/Shutterstock.com The gut bacterium Bacteroides fragilis has long presented researchers with a paradox. It has been associated with colorectal cancer, yet it also lives quite happily in most healthy people. A new study from a Danish research team offers a possible clue. When they looked beyond the bacterium itself and into its genome, they found […]

maxim ibragimov/Shutterstock.com For four decades, a controversial idea has shaped how autism is understood by researchers, healthcare professionals and the public: the claim that autistic people are “mind blind”. The phrase suggests an inability to grasp what others think or feel. It is simple, memorable – and wrong. The claim rests on a concept called […]

Dmitry Naumov/Shutterstock For years, debates about maternity care have centred on how women give birth. But the more important question has always been safety. Vaginal birth, assisted birth and caesarean section are different clinical routes, not measures of success. The outcome that matters is the wellbeing of both mother and baby, guided by individual risk […]

Photoroyalty/Shutterstock At 5am, social media fills with proof that the early risers have already won the day. Cold plunges. Journals. Sunrise runs. Productivity gurus insist this is the routine that separates high performers from everyone else, reinforced by high-profile early risers such as Apple CEO Tim Cook, entrepreneur Richard Branson and Hollywood actor Jennifer Aniston. […]

myboys.me/Shutterstock People recovering from eating disorders often use social media for support, seeking out recovery content, body-positive creators and others with similar experiences. But recent research my colleagues and I have conducted suggests these platforms can also steer users back towards the very content they are trying to avoid. We carried out in-depth interviews with […]