Social connections may boost immunity and reduce disease risk Interactions with friends and family may keep us healthy because they boost our immune system and reduce our risk of diseases such as heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes, new research suggests. Researchers from the UK and China drew this conclusion after studying proteins from...

Your Body’s Disease Defenses Building and Boosting the Immune System Every day while you eat, sleep, work, and play, battles are being fought throughout your body. You rarely feel it. But bacteria, viruses, and other microbes are constantly invading from the outside world. Your body has a defense system for such invaders. It’s called the...

Pernicious lead exposure in air, water, soils cost 151 million Americans some well-being In 1923, lead was first added to gasoline to help keep car engines healthy. However, automotive health came at the great expense of our own well-being. A new study calculates that exposure to car exhaust from leaded gas during childhood altered the...

Learn How to Keep Food Safe Don’t let bad food spoil your celebrations this holiday season. Follow safe food practices so everyone can keep enjoying the festivities after their meals. Germs like bacteria, viruses, and parasites—or the toxins they produce—can get into your food and make you sick. “The difficult thing is you can’t see...

Specially packaged DNA secreted by tumor cells can trigger an immune response that inhibits the metastatic spread of the tumor to the liver, according to a study led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Korea’s Yonsei University. The discovery improves the scientific understanding of cancer progression and anticancer immunity,...

A heart attack or stroke can happen within seconds. Getting treatment fast for these medical emergencies can mean the difference between life and death or disability. But do you know the symptoms of these dangerous events? And do you know if you’re at risk for having one? More than 1.5 million people have a heart...

Low-sugar diet in early life reduces risk of chronic diseases in adulthood A low-sugar diet in utero and in the first two years of life can meaningfully reduce the risk of chronic diseases in adulthood, a new study has found, providing compelling new evidence of the lifelong health effects of early-life sugar consumption. Published in Science,...

1. Men and women have different fat distribution, and doctors already know that this can affect men’s risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.2. Men tend to develop type 2 diabetes earlier and at a lower BMI than women.3. Researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden have shown that abdominal fat in obese men...

Researchers are looking for new biomarkers to help them diagnose Alzheimer’s before symptoms develop. Image credit: recep-bg/Getty Images. . There are currently about 32 million people globally living with Alzheimer’s disease, with that number expected to grow.​ . Right now it is difficult to diagnose a person with Alzheimer’s disease in the asymptomatic stage before...

Heart Disease​ There’s good news for O blood types. Research shows your risk of coronary heart disease tends to be lower. Experts aren’t sure why. Some think it might be because other types are more likely to have higher cholesterol and higher amounts of a protein that’s linked to clotting. Stomach Cancer ​ A, AB,...