Health

Across the U.S., it’s a hot summer, and electricity prices are high. Various public officials and corporate websites suggest people set their thermostats to 78°F (25.6°C), or even 81°F (27.2°C), as a way to stay relatively cool without breaking the bank. But as someone who studies energy costs, I know from both personal and professional experience that it’s not that simple.

A new study by McGill researchers could help explain why people who have quit smoking remain at elevated risk of lung disease long after their last cigarette. Their paper, published in Translational Research, provides one of the most detailed pictures to date of how quitting smoking affects the human lung at the cellular level.

Young women are leading a worrying increase in early-onset type 2 diabetes diagnoses in England, according to a new analysis. In a population study of type 2 diabetes in England, researchers found a clear generational divide, with diagnosis rates rising rapidly among younger adults, particularly women, while declining in older age groups.

Researchers have developed a breath detector with a chemical sensor that sniffs out when your body is burning fat through a single exhale. Reporting in Device, the handheld, smartphone-assisted device measures acetone—a molecule that is released into the breath when the body burns fat—in about 90 seconds with laboratory-level accuracy.

With fitness culture booming and “no days off” mindsets trending, new research is challenging common assumptions about “exercise addiction”—finding that the issue is real but often misunderstood and overstated.

Women with polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS; also known as polycystic ovary syndrome or PCOS) face a fourfold higher risk of heart disease than women without PMOS, according to a new nationwide U.S. study published in The Lancet Obstetrics, Gynaecology, & Women’s Health.

Heart failure already affects more than 60 million people worldwide and is one of the leading causes of hospitalization among people 65 and older. Although it is commonly associated with advanced cardiovascular disease, it actually develops over many years, often without symptoms. Authors of a new expert statement published in the European Heart Journal argue that this is precisely why prevention may become the most effective weapon in tackling one of the greatest challenges of modern medicine.

People around the world are living longer than ever before but spending more of those additional years in poor health, according to a new Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study published in The Lancet Public Health.

A new study suggests what’s flushed down the drain can offer a real-time snapshot of what communities are eating. Researchers at Duke University School of Medicine and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill analyzed tiny fragments of plant and animal DNA from wastewater samples from 19 North Carolina communities representing 2.1 million people to reveal how economics, immigration and geography influence what’s on our plates.

Risk calculators that doctors use to estimate a person’s risk of a heart attack or stroke work about as well for predicting certain cancers, according to a new study by UCL (University College London) researchers. The tools, used widely by primary care physicians and hospitals in the U.K., U.S. and Europe, estimate a person’s percentage risk of having a heart attack or stroke over 10 years based on factors such as age, BMI and smoking status—factors also linked to a higher risk of cancer.

A new study by investigators from Mass General Brigham finds that nearly 1 in 3 U.S. adults without heart disease—and almost 4 in 5 of those who have already had a heart attack, stroke or other cardiovascular event—have LDL, or “bad,” cholesterol levels above the goals set by the newly released 2026 American cholesterol guidelines. Additionally, among adults without heart disease who were above target, about 3 in 4 are not receiving any cholesterol-lowering medication. The results are published in JAMA.