Nancy Shute
-
The number of people being diagnosed with diabetes has been on the decline since 2009, after soaring for decades. Doctors say people may be changing their eating and exercise habits for the better.
-
Advance directives don't guarantee that a person's wishes for end-of-life care will always be honored. Some states let people use physician orders that override legal requirements to perform CPR.
-
A study of thousands of people, most in committed relationships, finds that having sex about once a week correlates best with happiness and well-being. More didn't turn out to be better.
-
People in lower-income communities are more likely to die of colon cancer, often because they don't get diagnosed early enough. Those premature deaths take a financial toll, too.
-
It's the kind of oops no scientist wants to make. But the researchers who published a paper saying that watching sad movies makes it hard to perceive the color blue now say they erred.
-
African-American women's advantage in avoiding breast cancer has evaporated, with their rates rising to match white women's. Higher obesity rates, a risk factor for breast cancer, may be one reason.
-
A lot of people think doctors are being way too absolutist about moderate drinking in pregnancy. But the doctors say since there's no way to know what's safe, it's not worth the risk.
-
Ten percent of pregnant women say they drink, even though doctors have spent decades saying that birth defects and developmental delays from alcohol can be prevented completely by abstaining.
-
When drinking is part of the picture, young women are more apt to say their first sexual experience was coerced, and that it wasn't planned with a romantic partner in an ongoing relationship.
-
Ductal carcinoma in situ often doesn't turn into breast cancer, but most women have surgery for it. The trend is for less invasive surgery, which hasn't affected survival rates.
-
Firstborns in Britain are more likely to be nearsighted, a finding that matches other studies. Maybe it's because parents are more likely to push studying than they do with subsequent kids.
-
Hispanics are less likely to get cancer than non-Hispanic whites, but they're more susceptible to gallbladder, liver and stomach cancer. And country of origin affects cancer risk, too.