Learning that my spike in blood pressure might be due to hidden anxiety seemed like good news. Until I learned more. — Six weeks ago I went to an urgent care center after an inexplicable and unprecedented bout of dizziness. There my blood pressure was measured at 160/92, which is really high (the threshold for high blood pressure, also called hypertension, is 130/80). It surprised the hell out of me. But an…

With a few exceptions, they don’t improve health, research finds — Americans spend some $50 billion a year on vitamins and dietary supplements. Most of that money would be better spent on fruits and vegetables, stress-reducing activities or just about anything else deemed good for you. Yet half of adults lean on dubious pills to supplement their arguably unhealthy diets, sometimes…

The fascinating diversity of poop shapes, sizes, smells and colors and what they say about your health — Even when everything comes out OK, poop exhibits an engrossing variety of shapes, sizes, textures, aromas and colors. I mean, you don’t even want to know what’s in there. Dead bacteria. Expired red blood cells. Mucus and bile. Undigested corn. You name it. But your business, along with its frequency…

The locus of hardheadedness turns viewpoints into objective truths, no matter the facts — One of life’s most bizarre and frustrating conundrums is the warped reality in which nearly everyone on either side of controversial issues — abortion, gun control, election fraud, climate change, vaccine safety, you name it — all think their view is correct and the other side is flat wrong. This…

News Brief: Most Americans overestimate the healthfulness of their food — The typical American doesn’t exactly consume an ideal mix of food. That’s no secret. But a new study suggests that most U.S. adults are somewhat to very clueless about just how unhealthy their diet is. “Most adults overrate the quality of their diet, sometimes to a substantial degree,” said study…

Covid “survivors” face potentially years of fatigue, pain, cognitive decline and heart problems — Dr. Bob Wachter has two words for Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2, otherwise known as long Covid: “It sucks.” The physician, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and a widely recognized Covid-19 expert, is seeing long Covid unfold for his wife. “Now 5 weeks post-infection, Katie has…

Inexplicable childhood liver failures and other odd virus behaviors have doctors puzzled and scientists scrambling to find causes — Serious cases of hepatitis, including two that required liver transplants, developed weeks to months after five children in Israel recovered from mild cases of Covid-19, a new study finds. …

Chew on these science-based, common-sense ways to eat better — Nutrition advice is a bewildering brew of helpful and terrible information, steadily stirred by conflicting new studies, click-bait headlines to misleading articles, and the food industry’s colossal marketing efforts aiming to simply sell, sell, sell. Amid all the confusion, however, is a strong expert consensus on the key aspects of…

Inadequate science, lousy advice and heavy marketing concoct a stew of confusion — Bombarded with conflicting recommendations from scientists, pseudoscientists, friends and relatives on what foods are the absolute healthiest or the most deadly, best or worst for the environment, ethically acceptable or morally unacceptable, we might sometimes feel like there’s nothing left to eat. Why is this so hard?