How federal officials talk about health is shifting in troubling ways

Researchers led by Hiroshi Ohno at the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences (IMS) in Japan have discovered why smoking tobacco helps people suffering from ulcerative colitis, a chronic disease typified by inflammation of the large intestine.

People tend to be self-preoccupied. Self-interest is good when it ensures that one's needs are met, but it can also be maladaptive; research shows that the tendency to self-focus promotes the occurrence of depression and anxiety and can even prolong these conditions. Is there a neural representation of self-preoccupation?

Most people are well aware of the effects of chronic stress in the modern world. While some stress can be a good thing, like the type of stress your body feels during an intense workout, prolonged or chronic stress can lead to a myriad of health problems, including anxiety, heart disease, and inflammation. And, at a larger scale, the high prevalence of chronic stress in the population increases the burden on public health systems.

As people age, they display a bias in recognizing emotions as positive—to the point of improperly labeling neutral or negative emotions as positive.

A molecule made by bacteria in the gut can hitch a ride to the kidneys, where it sets off a chain reaction of inflammation, scarring and fibrosis—a serious complication of diabetes and a leading cause of kidney failure—according to a new study from researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Mie University in Japan.

Navigating health care can be challenging under any circumstances, and systemic barriers can make the experience even more difficult for some groups. Weight-related stigma and inequities in health care can create barriers and negatively influence the experiences of people in larger bodies or living with obesity when visiting primary care physicians. These negative experiences can often lead to health care avoidance.

A new national survey of over 580 school nurses and diabetes health care providers has revealed critical barriers to implementing the American Diabetes Association's (ADA) Diabetes Medical Management Plan (DMMP) in schools. While the DMMP is widely recognized as a comprehensive tool, respondents identified key usability issues—including integration into clinical workflows and gaps in guidance for modern diabetes technologies like continuous glucose monitors and automated insulin delivery systems. These findings informed major revisions to the DMMP to better support school nurses and improve care for children with diabetes nationwide.

Online grocery shopping has the potential to increase food access for households in areas where supermarkets selling affordable, healthy foods are scarce. When Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits were expanded to include online food purchases, it increased access to markets, but research showed that SNAP families who shopped online made fewer purchases of fruits, vegetables, and legumes.

Legislation to restrict supermarket sales of foods high in fat, sugar or salt (HFSS) has led to a marked reduction in purchases, according to the first ever independent analysis.

I have been teaching a course on rural criminology since 2014, and most of my students are surprised by the information on violence against women presented to them.

Feelings of shame are linked to reduced quality of life—as shown by the first study to measure shame as a factor influencing the connection between chronic gastrointestinal disorders and mental health.

The authors of a new study have identified distinct personality profiles of people with impulsivity, with different attributes that influence whether a person engages in, or avoids, high-risk drinking. The study suggests that the link between impulsivity and high-risk drinking is more nuanced than commonly understood. The profiles, described in Alcohol: Clinical and Experimental Research, may give health care providers a framework to personalize interventions more effectively to prevent harms related to alcohol use.

After a person survives a heart attack, the heart has a brief window of time in which it can heal if the right circumstances exist. But most of the time, scar tissue forms in the areas that lacked oxygen during the heart attack. This scar tissue impairs heart function, which can worsen into heart failure, reducing quality of life and increasing the risk of early death.

Deep inside the body, a slow-growing cluster of mutated blood cells can form. This cluster, found in 1 in 5 older adults, can raise the risk of leukemia and heart disease, often without warning.

Scientists have long struggled with how to study the gut's vast nervous system—often called the body's "second brain"—without damaging it. Current research methods are invasive and often require complex surgeries that make it difficult to study normal gut function.

Dining under palm trees on a patio at Mar-a-Lago in December, President-elect Donald Trump reassured chief executives at pharmaceutical giants Eli Lilly and Pfizer that anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wouldn't be a radical choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services.

Cesarean delivery is the most common inpatient surgery in the U.S. but it also carries inherent surgical risks, including vascular, visceral, soft tissue, and nerve damage, which can lead to significant maternal health complications and even death.

Have you ever wondered if a bizarre dream was caused by something you ate the night before? If so, you're not alone. We all have strange or unsettling dreams now and then, and when we do, we want to know what might cause them.