Health & Wellness

A health writer’s quest to find new ways to nod off and end the no-sleep cycle My history with sleep is like a roller coaster — making arduous, steady climbs to stretches of adequate rest, then careening with compounding speed into long stretches of little more than four hours a night. Early in my career,…

Your skin changes with age. It becomes thinner, loses fat, and no longer looks as plump and smooth as it once did. Your veins and bones can be seen more easily. Scratches, cuts, or bumps can take longer to heal. Years of suntanning or being out in the sunlight for a long time may lead…

Memory is a funny thing. We all get details wrong from time to time, misremember or simply have gaps in recall. You may remember eating in a nice Italian restaurant before seeing My Fair Lady but really you ate at that restaurant before seeing Chicago. This kind of memory confusion is normal. But less commonly, because of underlying neurological issues,…

In 2004, a team of researchers at Rush University Medical Center enlisted a group of older adults who were participating in the ongoing Rush Memory and Aging Project (MAP) for a spin-off study. MAP began in 1997 with the goal of pinpointing the factors associated with memory loss in older adults, with an emphasis on Alzheimer’s…

Temperatures are soaring in many regions of the country, putting people — especially older adults — at risk for heat-related illness, even death. And one thing that doesn’t help is if you are taking medications that interfere with your body’s ability to cool itself down.“This issue is particularly important for older people because they tend…

Many people assume veggies are always healthier raw; that chopping, slicing, dicing or grating them after they’ve been washed is all they need to work their nutritional magic, but that’s not always the case. In some instances, cooking releases nutrients that aren’t available from vegetables if you eat them straight from the farmers market or supermarket. From…

As summer bears down, triple-digit temperatures in some parts of the country are no longer an anomaly — they’re normal. Southern states are grappling with a relentless heat wave, with temperatures topping triple digits. These high temps have arrived much earlier in the season than normal, and millions of people are living under heat alerts. But even in…

Osteoporosis weakens bones to the point that they can break easily. It is called a “silent disease” because people who develop it may not notice any changes until a bone breaks — usually a bone in the hip, spine, or wrist. Bones are made of living tissue. To keep them strong, a healthy human body…

In the United States today, approximately 96 million adultshave prediabetes — and up to 70 percent of those who have elevated blood sugar will go on to develop type 2 diabetes, according to an American Diabetes Association expert panel. That’s in addition to more than 37 million who already have the chronic disease. Naturally, then,…