According to recent evidence, our ancestors might have started domesticating cacao trees, the beans of which we ground into cocoa, as many as 1,500 years earlier than we had previously thought. One recent study overturns assumptions about when and where we first consumed cocoa. It’s safe to say that most of us enjoy chocolate in…
The news about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s operation for two cancerous lung nodules is encouraging but incomplete. The lower lobe of her left lung, which contained the two nodules, was removed in surgery on Friday, and scans before the operation showed no signs of cancer anywhere else in her body, according to a statement from…
CAPE TOWN — A musician from South Africa had a tumor in his brain, so doctors opened a hole in his skull to remove it. But they had a crucial request: He must play his acoustic guitar during the surgery. The musician, Musa Manzini, a jazz bassist, was awake when the doctors performed the surgery…
Night sweats are where a person wakes up with clothes or sheets that are damp from sweating. Sleeping with too many clothes on may be the cause, but night sweats can also be the result of a hormonal imbalance, such as low testosterone that can affect both males and females. Night sweats are a common…
More than two-thirds of women of childbearing age in the United States use contraceptives, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Almost all American women turn to contraception at some point in their lives. But at any given time, many may not be using it for various reasons: because…
Fibrocystic breast disease is a name for healthy breast tissue that feels lumpy and may be painful at times. It is not a true disease and is not harmful. The medical community sometimes refers to the condition as fibrocystic changes. Fibrocystic breast disease is very common. Some experts estimate that about 50 percent of women…
Image CreditCraig Frazier Every time her parents pick up a new prescription at a Walgreens in Houston, they follow Duyen Pham-Madden’s standing instructions: Use the iPad she bought for them, log onto FaceTime, hold up the pill bottles for her examination. Her mother, 79, and father, 77, need numerous medications, but have trouble grasping when…
Image A heart attack or stroke may be an early sign of cancer. Researchers studied records of 374,331 Medicare beneficiaries, mean age 76, who were given cancer diagnoses from 2005 to 2013. They matched them with an equal number of controls without cancer. Then they retrospectively tracked heart attacks and strokes in the two groups…
Q. What are the consequences of taking antibiotics on your gut microbiome? Does the gut ever fully recover? A. Most gut bacteria recover quickly, but there can be long-lasting consequences from taking antibiotics. The changes, however, are not necessarily harmful. The gut microbiome, the roughly 10 trillion to 100 trillion bacteria and other microorganisms that…
The tobacco giant Altria, maker of Marlboro and other top-selling brands of cigarettes, has agreed to pay nearly $13 billion for a 35 percent stake in Juul Labs, the wildly popular vaping company that burst on the scene in 2015 with a mission to render cigarettes obsolete. To sweeten the deal, part of Altria’s investment…